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Don Filcek, Beginning with God: A Walk Through the Book of Genesis; Genesis 19 The Human Way
Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Madawan, Michigan, where you can grow in faith, community, and service. This is a message from the series, Beginning with God, Walking Through the Book of Genesis, by Pastor of Teaching and Vision, Don Filcik.
If you'd like to learn more about Recast or access our sermon archive, please visit us at recastchurch .com. Here's Pastor Don.
We're going to be jumping into Genesis chapter 19. Some of you know what that means. Some of have read it. You're familiar with the story before. I'm preaching through, and you guys know this by now, that I tend to preach through a book of the Bible chapter by chapter and section by section.
Somewhere around Genesis chapter 10, I woke up in a cold sweat, and I said to Linda, I said, I just realized I have to preach Genesis 19 because I'm going through this sudden epiphany, like, Genesis 19 is coming.
I want to point out, all of scripture is God's scripture, right? It's all His, and it's all the Word of God, and yet this is a bit of a more intense chapter than some in the text of scripture. Possibly one of the most dicey, and awkward, and uncomfortable texts of all scripture, for multiple reasons.
That's the kind of funny thing, is that it brings together judgment, and sexuality, and all kinds of elements, all into one that kind of go, whoa, what is going on here? And there's incest in it, and what?
You know, it can be a lot, but I think that our minds, I think the things that our mind turns to immediately, when we think of the account of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, are likely not even the main point.
They're not the main thing that the text is seeking to communicate to us. Last week, we saw God establish a sense of patience and mercy toward even those who are wicked. I mentioned that the people of Sodom had been declared very wicked sinners against the Lord over 10 years prior to the events that we're reading about here.
So for 10 years, they've been declared wicked, and yet God had been merciful and patient with them. God made the effort to come down in human form to validate the sinfulness of the city. And then finally, and most directly, God agreed with Abraham in our text last week, and Abraham made a request to save the entire city if just 10 righteous people could be found there.
And so God demonstrated His mercy in saying, yeah, okay, I will save the entire city as wicked as we're going to see them revealed in this text. I would save all of them if there were 10 righteous there, the mercy of God.
So God shows Himself willing to be patient, not being quick to jump to judgment. And I've mentioned in last week's message, really about the notion of how merciful is your God, and recognizing that we all come from different backgrounds, so that we have basically a spectrum of different viewpoints of different thoughts on how merciful God is.
So some of you were raised, or just you have some fuzzy cultural notions that God is just merciful without mention of sin. He's just kind of like, He'll just brush that over, and He'll push that off to the side, and it's not that big of a deal.
And God is just there to love, and He's just warmth, and there's no judgment at all, and things like that. Some of you are raised more on that side of the spectrum. Others maybe lean over in the other side of their view of God, of kind of seeing Him as a God of wrath, and a God of judgment, and He's looking for me to mess up.
And once I mess up just this much, He's ready to come in with the hammer, right? He's just really quick to judge. And so raise your hand. I want you to raise your hand, just practice, make sure you're awake.
Raise your hand if you know yourself enough to go, I know where I'm at on that spectrum. I know where I'm at in regard to, do I have a God that's almost too merciful, and doesn't deal with sin, and has no justice, or He's over here.
Raise your hand if you kind of know where you're at on that, or your upbringing. Okay, good. I think it's good for us to think about those things, and think about our view of God, and how our view might be in error.
Would you agree with me on that? I would dare say our view is in error in some way. We don't have Him as merciful enough, or we have Him as not just enough. So God shows Himself in our text willing to be patient, not being quick to jump to judgment.
But then we also have the major lesson to learn even though God is slow to anger, and slow to judgment. Judgment is indeed real. We can become lulled into thinking that judgment and justice are never coming.
We have a sense of the patience of God. How many of you would admit, God has been patient with me? Yeah, He's been over the top patient with me. And so we can tend to think, oh His patience will just, it will just always be there, and things will just continue to go on as they are today.
They will go on forever, maybe even improve. Technology is getting better, and all this stuff, and everything's just going to keep getting better, right? Isn't that? And the reality of the text of scripture is that a day of judgment is coming.
A great day of judgment is indeed on the way. And we'll see a glimpse of that, a mirror image of that, or a small case study in that, in that a day came for Sodom. There was a day of judgment, and that is a reflection of how reality is.
Judgment is real. And we ought to think of God's patience in another way. We ought to think He has been patient with me, and therefore we should turn to Him, and live for Him while His patience is here, before His patience runs out.
This is a text that covers both human depravity, that's the real darkness of it, and then also the limit of God's patience. God's patience does have a limit. So I want you to open your Bibles to Genesis chapter 19.
That's page 12 in the Bible in the seat back in front of you, and if you don't own a Bible, I ask you to take that one with you. We want everybody to have a copy of the Word of God. But follow along. It's a little bit of a longer passage, but I believe that it's beneficial for us to read the text of scripture, even some that seem dicey and awkward to us.
So let's dive in, follow along as I read Genesis chapter 19, and hold on to your hats. The two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them and bowed himself with his face to the earth, and said, My lords, please turn aside to your servant's house and spend the night and wash your feet.
Then you may rise up early and go on your way. They said, No, we will spend the night in the town square. But he pressed them strongly, so they turned aside to him and entered his house. And he made them a feast and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.
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. And they called to Lot, Where are the men who came to you tonight?
Bring them out to us that we may know them. 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. Behold, I have two daughters who have not known any man.
Let me bring them out to you and do to them as you please. Only do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof. But they said, Stand back. And they said, This fellow came to sojourn, and he has become the judge.
Now we will deal worse with you than with them. And they pressed hard against the man Lot and drew near to break the door down. But the men reached out their hands and brought Lot into the house with them and shut the door.
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. Then the men said to Lot, Have you anyone else here, sons-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, because the outcry against its people has become great before the Lord, and the Lord has sent us to destroy it. So Lot went out and said to his sons-in-law, who were to marry his daughters, Up, get out of this place, for the Lord is about to destroy the city.
But he seemed to his sons-in-law to be jesting. As 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 lingered. So the men seized him and his wife and his two daughters by the hand, the Lord being merciful to him, and they brought him out and set him outside the city. And as they brought them out, one said, Escape for your life.
Do not look back or stop anywhere in the valley. Escape to the hills, lest you be swept away. And Lot said to them, O no, my lords, behold, your servant has found favor in your sight, and you have shown me great kindness in saving my life.
But I cannot escape to the hills, lest the disaster overtake me and I die. Behold, the city is near enough to flee to, and it is a little one. Let me escape there. Is it not a little one? And my life will be saved.
He said to him, Behold, I grant you this favor also, that I will not overthrow the city of which you have spoken. Escape there quickly, for I can do nothing till you arrive. Therefore, the name of the city was called Zoar.
The sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zoar. Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur 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 Lot's wife behind him looked back, and she became a pillar of salt. And Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord. And he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, 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. So it was that 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.
Now Lot went up out of Zoar and lived in the hills with his two daughters, for he was afraid to live in Zoar. So he lived in a cave with his two daughters. And the firstborn said to the younger, Our father is old, and there is not a man on earth to come in to us after the manner of all the earth.
Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve offspring from our father. So they made their father drink wine that night. And the next day 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 offspring from our father. 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 the daughters of Lot became pregnant by their father. The firstborn bore a son and called his name Moab. He is the father of the Moabites to this day.
The younger also bore a son and called his name Ben-Ammi. He is the father of the Ammonites to this day. Let's pray. Father, we read in here a text of messed up humanity. It is crud and junk, and yet it is not very different from our own hearts.
It is not very different from the crud that we see here. And so, Father, I pray that you would protect us from reflecting on the wickedness of those people there in Sodom. That you would protect us from the notion that we are okay because we have not done this thing, but that you would show us and open our eyes to our own failures, our own sins, our own brokenness before you.
And, Father, that you would then in turn shine all the brighter against that backdrop of evil and wickedness that we see in our own heart, the glory of the gospel, that you save us, that you are merciful, that you would send angels down to grab a hold of Lot by the hand and pull him out.
And, Father, that in essence is a picture, an image of what you have done for us. And so, as we consider that destruction, that thorough destruction of these cities, this entire valley, Father, it is a picture of what we all deserve.
And yet, by your mercy and your grace, you are plucking us out from the destruction like those who are destined for the fire. And you've pulled us out and preserved us and saved us by your mercy and by your grace.
And so, Father, I ask that we would rejoice as people who have been saved, not because we deserved it, that we are in essence righteous like Lot is righteous. He's messed up, he's jacked up, and by the end he is completely compromised and shamed, and yet you saved him.
And, Father, he is in the New Testament declared righteous, not that he is righteous, not that he earned it or gained it. And so, Father, I pray that you would help us to reflect on our own behavior, our own thoughts, and then delight and rejoice in salvation through Jesus as we sing these songs.
And it's in his name that we pray. A big thanks to Rob and the band for leading us in worship. In Josh's absence, I appreciate that Rob's able to step up and lead us that way. I encourage you, get as comfortable as possible as we dive into this text.
Remember that there are, I think there are more, are there more doughnuts over there, Pete? He's just getting, grabbing the last one. There were doughnuts left. No, there's more coffee, more doughnuts, more juice.
I know we just took a break, but at some point you might need to get up and top off there. Restrooms are back here as well. But we start off right where the story broke off last week. And so, as we're marching through the book of Genesis, two angels had left Abraham and the Lord and headed down into the valley to visit Sodom, while the text last week followed Abraham and the Lord who stayed up on the ridge overlooking the valley and had a conversation.
And you remember what that conversation was? Would you preserve, are you going to, are you a God who's going to treat the wicked and the righteous the same? Or are you a God who would be willing to preserve this wicked city for, say, 50 righteous people?
And then there's this bargaining that goes back and forth all the way to the point where finally they agree on how many? Ten. So, for ten righteous people, God says, I will spare the wicked city of Sodom.
Okay, so God shows himself to be merciful there. And so we followed that dialogue last week and left the angels going down in the valley. So, we pick up their story this week. Right at the beginning of our text, the two angels came to Sodom in the evening.
They left Abraham and the Lord and headed down there. Where do they find Lot? It's interesting to note where they find Lot. Lot is, it says in the text, sitting where? Sitting in the gate. He's there in the gate of the city of Sodom.
Now, it's just interesting to note, as you do historical and cultural study on the era and the time and what was going on in that time and place, it's significant that he has a seat in the city gate. The city gate was the place where, not necessarily the marketplace, but where a lot of civic things happen.
So, it was the courthouse. It was the place where the deeds were kept and all kinds of land contract types things were signed and covenants were ratified and all that kind of stuff. You'd have like, the power, not the power of attorney, who's the person that has the power to stamp stuff?
Notary. You know, your notary public is sitting in the gate and stuff. So, you have these people with civic responsibilities have a seat in the gate. Now, anybody was welcome to come and stand in the gate.
Okay, you could come and stand there, but there wasn't a seat reserved for you. If you came there, every single one of us, as commoners, would have the chance to go into the city gate and stand and wait our turn to see a judge or to see somebody who we needed some arbitration for or something like that, but that he seated there.
Do you see why I'm bringing that up? Why is that significant? Lot has an official civic duty in the city of Sodom. How integrated has he become? We left him going down to the valley to pitch his tent close to Sodom.
Now, he's there and he's got official responsibilities in the city. It's not like he set up his tent and visits the marketplace for a couple of times, visits a couple of times a week to buy eggs or something.
He's in the city. He's involved in the day-to-day life of this wicked community. It's interesting to note that Lot as a foreigner, though, is the one to greet the angels. He's the one, and maybe that some have speculated that maybe that was his official civic duty, is like the town greeter or like the welcome dude or whatever.
And notice how he reflects the hospitality of his uncle Abraham who raised him. Remember, he was raised in the household of Abraham. So, he's seen, he's got to know Abraham and knows him very well. Now, they parted ways and we saw that earlier in the book of Genesis how he's very wealthy and his flocks were multiplying and his shepherds were getting in the way of Abraham's shepherds and flocks and there wasn't enough room in the land and so they separated, right?
So, we know that this guy is extremely wealthy and I don't know that it means that he lives in the city that he doesn't have flocks. He's just wealthy enough to have a lot of people taking care of his flocks out there, out in the valley.
And so, he's living inside the city, but the implication is that he's still an extremely wealthy individual. But here he comes, these two visitors come in and he bows low. Now, I think it's important for us to understand that this bowing does not indicate that he understood who they were.
I don't believe he had any reason to know that they were angelic visitors until they actually reveal that to him later. They're going to actually declare who they are and what they've come to accomplish.
But up to this point, so this is just common courtesy. He bows low, he offers a roof to stay under, water to wash their feet, but there's something that's interesting about the way that the discourse goes here early in chapter 19.
He is eager to move them along. He strongly presses them, so they turn aside and but he is actually eager to get them moved on. Look at verse 2. He said, my lords, please turn aside to your servant's house and spend the night and wash your feet.
Then you may rise up early and go on your way. Like maybe we could just kind of, if you could just hurry up and get to my house, we'll get you inside, we'll have dinner and then you can go to sleep and then like maybe just we'll have a light breakfast very early like we can set the alarm clocks for four o 'clock and get you out of town.
Are you kind of, maybe Lot had some indication of what his culture was like. Maybe he had some indication of what we're going to see in the text is going to happen and he knew what it was like in Sodom, do you think maybe?
And he's desperate and eager to move them along. Now the end of verse 2 would have been relatively offensive. If you were reading this along and you were from the Middle East, even today, there's something that would stand out as somewhat offensive to you at the end of verse 2 that doesn't strike us as Americans because we're Americans and we don't get some of this stuff.
But it says, my lords, please turn aside to your servant's house and spend the night and wash your feet. Then you may rise, go early and on your way. And they said, what? No, no, no, no. We're going to spend the night in the town square.
The rejection of hospitality would stand out to the Middle Eastern mind. They're like, what? That's a high offense in one sense, but I think that it exists in the text. They actually say no to highlight, to really draw out and make Lot plead with them to stay.
And that emphasizes his knowledge of what's going on in the city, what it's like. So they're like, no, we're backpacking through. We're okay. We got our stuff. We'll just set up in the town square and we'll just, we got our little Coleman stove and we'll just have, you know, something to eat there and we're good.
We're good. And then we'll be on our way in the next day. And he presses them strongly. Okay. He twists their arm is almost the equivalent English expression. It has almost like a physical wrestling notion to it in Hebrew.
He twists their arm and keeps them from camping out in the town square. You get a pretty strong sense of what might happen to them if they sleep out in the town square. He was not clueless to what sodomite culture was like, and he's offering protection to these visitors.
He wants to whisk them off and into his house, hide them away, and then see them off early in the morning. There's indications that maybe he wasn't the only one in the city gate. And some others said, hmm, visitors.
Well, they give into the strong appeal. They stay with him. He prepares a feast. They enjoy a good meal together. Angels are one thing that's interesting. Angels can eat. Did you notice that? Not only that, but they can eat really good.
They went to Abraham's house and had a spread there, and then they come down into Sodom, and Lot lays out a spread for them there, and they're eating good in the neighborhood. I just put that together right then and there.
So far, the image we have of Lot, though, in the text is pretty good, right? What kind of indications do we have? Lot is being hospitable. He's being kind. He's inviting people in and inviting in foreigners and treating them kindly, right, and trying to protect them.
And Lot good? Right? So far? So far? You guys are looking at me blank. It's not a trick question. Is Lot behaving well so far in the text? Yes, he's behaving so far. Yeah, you don't want to implicate yourself yet.
But I do think that there's something to this virtue of hospitality in this culture. We can't overemphasize how important that was to their culture. It ought to be important to Christian culture, shouldn't it?
Our hospitality should be, we should have a high level of hospitality, a high level of sharing with one another. I think we've moved away from that. I think within the last 10 to 15 years, we've moved away from a culture of hospitality, right?
You're more likely to go out to eat with somebody than to be invited into their home to eat. Would you agree with me on that? Hospitality is kind of on the way out, but that's something that we see here in the text.
But then verse 4 is where things take a pretty significant dark turn. Read it with me and see what you think the author is trying to emphasize as I read this. Let me back up and just say this real quick.
Sorry, I'll read it. Our eyes are supposed to be looking for something in this text because we heard last week. What should we be looking for in Sodom that God is looking for in Sodom, that Abraham is concerned about in Sodom?
Not just someone, 10 righteous people. We should be looking. We should have our fingers ready. We don't even need to go to our toes because we've got 10, if you have 10 fingers. I know you all pretty well, but we should be counting.
We should be looking. We should be ready, ready with our fingers. Okay, where are we going to find these righteous people? We're kind of leaning. I just asked you, you're kind of leaning towards maybe one.
Have we maybe found one? Okay. And now let's read verse 4. But before they lay down, so they've had a great meal, probably had some discussion and stuff around the fire or whatever. The men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the, what?
Last man surrounded the house. The text goes to extremes to emphasize that every single male in Sodom is at Lot's house of age. Every one that can bear the title man. The welcome wagon rolls out and they all come out at night to welcome their visitors.
Now let's remember that we're supposed to be looking for 10 righteous. And so the text shows us with extreme emphasis that the mob represents every single leader in Sodom. Every single person who is to be the head of his household, every single person who is to be leading that community is present.
And now verse 5 shows their intention. And it's not just that they went to get together and play board games and talk about local politics. This is not the chamber of commerce coming out to promote local business.
They shout out to Lot. This is from the street into the house, inside the house, they can hear this request, not request, rather command. And they are commanding Lot to bring out his guests so that the crowd can know them.
And I don't think I need to emphasize to you, I mean, I'll cover just a couple things, evidences here, but I think you probably have the understanding of what to know something biblically is. Right? You have that?
Like so far in the book of Genesis, Adam knew Eve and Cain was born. Cain knew his wife and his firstborn son Enoch was born. Some have tried to interpret this lately, particularly within the last couple of years, you can get online and find articles that are going to emphasize this, that they try to interpret that the people of Sodom, the men of Sodom showed up to meet and greet Abraham's guests, that they just wanted to kind of hang out and get to know them.
And, hey, how come you're keeping, how come you're having a party and you didn't invite us? And they just wanted to get together and chat. Does that seem pretty reasonable? Is that what you think is, that's what you think is going on here?
It's really not a possible interpretation by the time we get down to verse nine and see that they actually intended to harm these individuals. They come to Abraham and they say, I mean, they come to Lot and they say, we're now going to do worse to you than we were going to do to them.
Does the word worse imply that they were going to do something bad in the first place? They're like, oh no, now we're really going to chat you up, Lot. We're going to talk to you a lot. You're going to have to put up with us talking to you a lot and meeting you a lot.
That's probably not it. I think we know what's going on in the text, right? Apparently the city of Sodom has developed a bizarre way of greeting visitors and I wonder, oh, it's just horrible to think about.
But this outcry that has risen to heaven, is it from people who have experienced this sense of hospitality? Do you think this is the first time this is novel and they just decided to do it this night?
There happened to be some angels that visited and they were like, hey, we got visitors, let's try this. Oh, this is the way that Sodom greets its visitors. This is vulgar, this is criminal, this is wicked, this is reprehensible.
You can add all kinds of adjectives to it. This is like hide your wife, hide your kids, hide your husbands, right? Some of you know what I'm talking about. I need to point out, I have to point this out.
It's here in the text and it's what is on everybody's mind. There's some level of this going on in your mind. We just had this, I don't know if you knew, there's like a DOMA thing that happened this past week and maybe a couple of you are aware of it, Supreme Court and all that stuff.
I need to point out that homosexuality is certainly implied in this text. Would you agree with me? A group of men come out and they say, send out these two men that we might get to know them. It's very clear in the text that that's what is going on here.
But it only serves to accentuate what is already an extremely deviant situation. Do you understand what I'm saying? Is this a broken situation if there's no homosexuality involved in it? Yeah. Now, nothing in the text of Scripture, should hear what I say here, nothing in the text of Scripture ever takes homosexuality as normative for human sexuality.
Nothing in the text of Scripture ever takes homosexuality as normative for human sexuality. But I want to point out that those reading this during the times of Moses would have found multiple offenses in this text piled on top of each other.
The first would be the lack of hospitality that the people of Sodom have. There is no hospitality. There's ruthlessness and crudeness and crassness, but there is no hospitality other than lot. And so that would have been strike one against the city of Sodom.
They are inhospitable. Would you agree with me on that? Strike two is the suggestion of illicit sexuality, the publicness of this, that they're screaming out and crying out into the town, send them out that we might know them.
Is that offensive? Yeah. So there's that offense that's a strike against them. And then there is the keystone, which would have been the homosexuality of the situation, would have been another strike.
In other words, the homosexuality in this text is not the main point. Now, I'm not saying that because I've got to bow down to some cultural fear that I have about what people think out there. It's just genuinely a work in dealing with this text that Genesis 19 is not about homosexuality.
Does it have homosexuality mentioned in it? Yes, but that's not what the text exists to communicate. It is a text about God's righteous judgment of wickedness. And that's all types of wickedness, including the wickedness that you and I see residing in our own hearts.
So it's very easy to divide this text from our common day, everyday life and go, well, this is a text about people out there. No, this is a text about what's in here and what this deserves. If we removed the aspect of homosexuality from the text, let's just say a crowd shows up and says to Lot, send out your wife.
Is that better? Is that less offensive to a holy and righteous God? It certainly piles on to the already gruesome reality of illicit sexual aggression that we see in this text. Do you guys agree with me?
Illicit sexual aggression. It's obvious that Sodom and Gomorrah were a highly sexualized culture. You see that. For these men to gather with unashamed shouting for new sexual partners shows a significant, huge depth of human depravity.
Would you agree with me on that? Just way deep into this. No shame, no shame. They're gathered together shouting for this. Now, some of us might have a hard time imagining a society so deep into sexual perversion that this is an acceptable practice.
Would you agree with me on that? It just seems, does that seem a little bit far from where you live? In one way, maybe, but in another way, not. Because our culture is civilized enough to do the same things, but primarily behind closed doors, right?
Isn't that what, I mean, we've civilized sin. And I praise God for the restraining force of our culture. Are you glad for that? But the reality of it is, what would our hearts do without external restraint?
What would our hearts do without police? What would our hearts do without each other holding each other accountable and working together in the body of Christ to say, how are you doing? And what are you doing?
And why are you doing? Right? What are our hearts capable of? This. This. As gruesome and as graphic as it is, this. We've used technology to expand sexual experience with many people in the privacy of our own homes.
We can obtain all kinds of illicit experience through computers, and iPads, and cell phones, and all kinds of tablets, and devices, and Blu-ray, and cable TV, and phone chat, and chat rooms, and probably a multitude of ways that I'm not even aware of.
So before we look down on the culture of Sodom, we should take a careful assessment of our own culture. But we must not end there. Scripture never affords us the room to look at the culture out there and judge them.
We have missed it if we end there. Because we've got to go deeper than that. And we've got to get here to ourselves. And many of us, it's more comfortable to end with the judgment out there. How many of you think that's more comfortable?
Is it more comfortable to address someone else's sins? Raise your hand if you think that's more comfortable. I do. I'll admit that. It's a lot easier to deal with somebody else's sins and not have to look in the mirror and see myself.
We need to take a long, deep look into our own hearts considering our sexual brokenness. I had an opportunity to go to a conference. Rob, and Zach, and Kyle, and I, all of the elders, went to a conference down in Louisville called Together for the Gospel.
We went there about a year and a half ago. It was when we were just first starting to bring Kyle on board and exciting first conference together. But they had a little breakout panel. The whole thing lasted about 20 minutes.
If anybody wants that link, I'll share it with you. But it was a group of pretty prominent speakers and leaders who were talking about the issue of homosexuality as that faces the church, and the church faces that, and kind of thinking through that.
And it was a really good panel. But there was one of the members of the panel, Albert Moeller. Have any of you ever heard of President Albert Moeller? He's the president of Southern Theological Seminary in Louisville, which used to be called Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Now it's just Southern Theological Seminary. He's a very outspoken individual about the whole gay agenda, homosexuality, all that kind of stuff. And that's given him a reputation. So he has a pretty negative reputation in the media and out in the community and stuff.
And so I just point that out to say, who is this guy that's going to say this quote that I read to you? A guy who is under fire constantly for his strong stand on the Bible in light of homosexuality. And this is what he said.
And this was so significant to me. I mean, it was one of those, you ever heard a comment that just kind of like, it just arrests your attention because of who is saying it? This is what he said. Our problem, he's talking about the church.
He says, our problem is in saying there are people out there who struggle with sexual issues. There are indeed people out there who struggle with sexual issues. There are people who struggle with sexual issues and they are called humans after puberty.
Humans after puberty struggle with sexual issues. He went on to say we are all sexually broken and the question is in what way? And so how dare we label one sexual aberration different or more wrong than ours?
Well, I know why we do that because it makes us feel better about ourselves or at least I don't do that or at least I'm not that way or whatever. And so we can even get a sense of pride over our sin isn't as bad as somebody else's sin.
Think about how messed up that is. And so for Albert Moeller to be saying that was a very powerful statement in that context. And that's kind of the way that the talk concludes is him saying, it's just a question of how.
In what way are we broken? God calls us to a standard of holiness regarding our sexuality and the reality is that all of us are broken to some degree and the God who has given us this powerful gift. Sexuality is a powerful gift and he's identified that it is meant to be safely contained within the protective boundaries of heterosexual marriage.
Some would take offense. Would you suggest that, would you agree with me that some in our culture would take offense at that statement that it's a powerful, would you agree with me that sexuality is a powerful force on this planet?
Human sexuality, powerful force. And God has the right as the author of it to put it within the context of a protective boundary for human flourishing, for human benefit, for human blessing. And so some out in our culture, some people would actually say, some of you might right here say, well Don, how loving is that?
What if two people really love each other? Isn't that, isn't that, to put a boundary on sexuality, isn't that ultimately to just say, you know, to fly in the face of love, but love is our culture defines it?
Yeah? What about the two teens who are in love? What about the married man who has three children at home who's falling in love with his secretary or his co-worker? Oh, isn't that sweet? Just love, right?
Do you see how that, it gets a little bit twisted. Does God have the right to define the parameters in which human sexuality is best? He does. And he has. And we have a tendency to kind of go, at any point, how many of you know when there's boundaries on something, that means that there's something that you might want to do that you're not allowed to do, right?
How many of you maybe have felt the compulsion to do something wrong this week? That you either had a choice to say no or yes to, right? And that's the reality of this. I'm certain we could talk a lot more about this, but let's get back into the text here.
Lot steps out of the house, seeks to reason with his community, and how does he address them? What's the word he uses for this mob that's gathered outside of his house? Look at the text. What does he say?
Brothers. How integrated was Lot in this community? He calls this raging mob with this sexual appetite, he says, brothers, brothers, simmer down. This is my house. You know me. We know each other. This is my house.
Don't do this wicked thing. And he correctly identifies it as a wicked thing. He's trying to appeal to his relationship with them. Wow. And now verse 8 is one of the most confusing and nauseating verses in the text of all of scripture.
As I try to wrestle through this verse, verse 8, it actually makes, it kind of makes me sick to my stomach, to be honest. I mean, it is a, I can't wrap my mind around it. Lot offers his daughters to the crowd.
There is no amount of cultural explanation. You can try your best to explain Middle Eastern culture and hospitality until you're blue in the face, and I won't take it. This is sinful and wicked and evil that he does this thing.
You can't, you can't describe this away. You can't get rid of it. But someone tried to exonerate Lot by suggesting that he makes the offer knowing full well that they won't take him up on it because they want something else.
Does that, does that solve the, oh, that solves it. Oh, okay. All right. You knew that they weren't going to have to follow through on it, so you offered them just kind of like, yeah. What does that do to the daughters?
Right? Anybody with me on this? This is nauseating. This is just, ugh. Lot is comparatively righteous in regard to good hospitality in Sodom, but when it comes to his family, he fails epically. This is horrendous and wicked and heinous and evil and impulsive and sick, and go ahead and pile on your own adjectives.
No amount of cultural explanation can vindicate Lot's offer of his daughters to that crowd. He has raised them as virgins. It says in the text that they have not yet known a man, and yet it's apparent from this offer that he has not, they have not been preserved as virgins because he values them or honors them.
Now, you have to ask yourself back up from Lot for just a second and ask what kind of culture would trade two daughters for two visitors? And further back, what kind of culture would even force this kind of choice to be happening on his doorstep?
Brokenness upon brokenness, a very wicked culture indeed. Would you agree with me? But the mob turns violent and presses Lot. Suddenly he is no longer one of them. He addresses them as brothers, and now he is, they're going to highlight how much he is not one of them all of a sudden.
It's been okay for him to sit in the city gate and do all kinds of stuff, but now all of a sudden he has judged them as sinners, and now the gloves are going to come off, right? You ever been there? Somebody calls you out?
Have you ever just got just crazy on someone because they called out sin in your life, and then later you're kind of like, huh, I think they might have been right. Maybe I did do something wrong. You know what I'm talking about?
How dare you? Look at the plank in your own eye. Get that out. You do this, and you did that, and who do you think you are? Oh, maybe they're right. Huh. Be nice to have that conversation about maybe they're right before you even go crazy.
There's something that we see about sin here. Certainly they press against Lot. They threaten to do worse to him than they were planning to do to the visitors, again showing that they intended harm from the beginning, but sin will always turn critical towards those who judge it.
Even for us, if we're honest in our hearts, we just kind of laughed about it and joked about it. Anybody who disagrees with my lifestyle when sin is involved is just not very smart. They're pretty dumb anyways, right?
I'm being facetious. Think about the following phrases. Who are you to judge me? You ever heard that? Maybe you heard it come out of your own mouth. It's none of your business. These are just related terms to what the people of Sodom are shouting at Lot at this time.
Who do you think you are? You came in here, and you're not even one of us. Who are you to try to change our culture, to try to change the things that we do? Such common attacks by someone that's caught in sin, right?
But Lot attempts to save his visitors, and that doesn't work, and in the end, he needs to be rescued by his visitors. He stepped out onto the front step and shut the door behind him as a move to try to put himself in between, as the mediator between this angry mob and his visitors, and now they have to pull him out.
He's going to get torn to pieces if they don't intervene, and so they pull him back in through the door. And the end of verse 11 is just boggling to me. You're caught in the act of doing something sinful, and God strikes you blind.
You might go home and rethink your life, maybe. What do they do? They wear themselves out. They are to the point of exhaustion trying to find the door to knock it down to get inside, and they're blind.
They've been blinded by the power of God, and we see who these visitors are and their power. That's kind of cool that they're able to just blind people. I mean, anybody think that's like, wow, and I don't know if they did this, and everybody went blind, or I don't know if they had hand gestures for it, or if they just said, blindness, and then everybody's blind.
Whatever. They did it, and the people, their insatiable appetite drives them in there, this blind rage to try to find the door, but a lot of commentaries pointed out that there's probably some supernatural involvement in the fact that they didn't find the door.
Do you find it incredible that they didn't find the door? How big was the city? How many people are standing outside? They got the house surrounded. You'd think that you could just put your hands on the house and eventually work your way around, you know, or whatever, but I had imagined that pandemonium.
I mean, can you imagine a mob? You got a mob out there already, and then they're struck blind, and I imagine people are knocking each other out, running into each other, and things are chaos outside the door, but nobody finds the door, I think, by God's intervention.
The two angels have seen what they came to see. Have you been trying to keep track? How many of you counted? Trying to get that 10 in? Just keep watching. How many of you got? The angels already got what they needed, okay?
They're not ten righteous, and immediately they begin the process of preparing the place for destruction. They ask him, who's your family? They're not all knowing. Angels are not all knowing. They are not God, so they're like, do you have sons?
Do you have daughters? Do you have sons-in-laws? Who do you have in the city? You better gather them together, because this place is going to go up in smoke. They ask him to gather them, and they basically identify themselves as messengers, as angels of the Lord, who have been sent to with the authority to destroy the city, and in verse 13, we find out that Lot's two daughters were engaged.
Oh, isn't that delightful? They're engaged, and the word sons-in-law, it's a word that actually indicates that they were, it can either be, it's used for somebody who is married, or somebody who is engaged, and so that's what's going on in the text here.
So you actually see in verse 14, so Lot went out and said to his sons-in-law who were to marry his daughters, look at the location word in verse 14, and what does Lot have to do in order to go see his sons-in-law?
He has to go out. They are out there among the blind, or I said to a man. Who are Lot's daughters engaged to? How integrated is Lot in this community? He has to go out. He warns them of the coming destruction in urgent words, up, get up now, leave this place, I'll guide you, I'll lead you, let's get to the, get to the edge, and they think he is joking.
I think he's, I think he's funny. How many people think that the coming judgment of God is a joke? Is there a lot of people in our world that think the coming judgment of God is just a joke, a farce? Some people think of it as a fanciful invention by religious people to keep the masses in line, like the naughty and nice list at Christmas time, keep those kids in line, but the judgment of God is no joke.
There is a day coming, and as a matter of fact, for Sodom, it was the very next day, as the sun breaks over the eastern horizon, the angels urge Lot to flee with the same urgency he has just used with his sons-in-law.
He has been urging, and he said, up, get up now and go, and now, when the shoe is on the other foot, the angels say, get up and go now, the judgment will now be immediate and swift, the patience of God now is spent.
He has been patient, he has been merciful, and now it's done. But it says in the text, Lot lingered there. Why do you think Lot lingered there? Well, the two angels have to physically grab him, pull him out of the city with his wife and daughters.
Just practically look at it. Sodom was his life. It had become his life. These were now his people, his brothers. All of his wealth was in the city, and he had substantial wealth. Do you think that those factors played into his lingering?
How much can I take with me? Can I take anybody with me? What's the situation here? And he's going. But the Lord, it says in the text, being merciful to him allowed the angels to take him out. They had to physically grab his hands and pull him out of the city.
Did Lot earn his salvation? Did he? Did Lot earn it? Did he deserve to be saved? Was he righteous in the sense of pure and holy without sin? Just saw this horrible thing with his daughters. It's not even close.
And let me suggest to you that that should give us hope. That God could save Lot means that he could save you and me. That he could save Lot means that he could save you and me. They tell him to run for his life.
All they've done is they've removed him from the city, but the whole valley is destined for destruction. The whole valley has this same culture. And so they take him outside of the city, probably outside of the walls.
It probably had walls around it at the time. They had city gates. And they say, run for your life, head for the hills, and don't look back. Look back is often a euphemism in Hebrew for actually going back.
And so how many of you, when you were raised in Sunday school, you had this image in your mind of don't look back. And I mean, as a kid, I was like, I don't think I could have not looked back, right? Like you have this image of them running across the field and the angels are pulling them and the two daughters and there's fire and they can probably see reflections of the fire falling on them.
But they're not allowed to look back, but they're wondering what's going on, what's going on back there. But they're like, you know, trucking. You have that image in your mind? Faults. Wrong image. It says in the text that they actually have to get to the city of Zohar before the destruction even begins.
They're done with their journey before fire begins to fall. According to the text of scripture. So we have these notions in our mind that there was all this temptation to look back. When in reality, I do not believe after studying the Hebrew language and studying this phrase, look back, that it means to just take a glance back.
It means just to look over your shoulder. It means to go back. It's a euphemism, a play on words, but Jesus actually used it that way too. He said, anybody who puts their hand to the plow in my kingdom and begins to work with me and work for me and is in my kingdom and starts to go and then turns back, leaves this and goes back, isn't worthy of me.
So Jesus used that same word picture, that same word play in one of his parables. So I don't think that it was necessarily breaking that to take a glance back. But Lot, who is old, is fearful that he cannot make a good enough time to get up into the hills before the destruction.
I think that age is the main factor, but behind him appealing and saying, no Lord, please give me, he's not moving super fast. He's a little bit slower on his feet. And apparently God agreed with him because there's a change in the plans and Lot is allowed to flee to a small town a few miles away called Zoar.
And God saves that little town of Zoar on account of Lot. And he says, I'm not going to, I'm not going to bring the judgment down until you arrive at that city and then everything else around is going to get smoked.
The picture is a bubble of salvation in the midst of God's judgment. And how many of you think lucky day for Zoar? Pretty lucky day. They won the lottery on that one. The destruction is waiting for Lot to arrive.
And once he arrives, the wrath of God Almighty begins and it would be terrifying to behold. Verses 24 through 25 state in very simple terms, what amounts to a horrendous localized catastrophe. The text bends over backwards to explain to us that this is not merely a natural phenomenon.
Now I think that it probably was a coupling of what God wanted to do. God often, how many of you notice this in scripture? He often uses natural phenomenon to work his miracles. Have you identified that?
So he brings up an east wind and brings in a whole flock of quail to his people and provides meat for them in the desert. But it says in the text that he used a mighty wind to bring the quail in. So he often does things through natural.
The rift valley where the Dead Sea and where Sodom would have been is one of the lowest places on the face of the planet, a place where the crust is the thinnest. Some of you, now you're thinking pizza.
And I like thick crust, so that didn't even affect me. But it's a place where the crust is the thinnest, so it's closest to the heat. And you actually have tar pits and all kinds of natural occurring, like think Yellowstone.
Have any of you ever been out to Yellowstone, you know, where the stuff's bubbling and hot springs and all that kind of stuff and a lot of sulfur and things like that. So, but it makes it double emphasizing the text that Yahweh rained down sulfur and fire from Yahweh.
He says it twice in the same verse, twice in the same sentence to emphasize that this is his judgment. This isn't some common occurrence or some just, you know, coincidence that it happened in this way.
The cities are demolished, the people are completely destroyed, and even the ground and all the plant life is scorched beyond recognition. It's all gone. But Lot's wife turned back and she became the infamous pillar of salt.
Now, God could have turned her into, you know, a nice ornate Corinthian column, you know, with decorations and all that stuff that the deer could come and lick. But I think that we might better understand what actually happened in that, you know, was there an understanding of a pillar of salt?
What does that imply or mean? And I'm not suggesting that God couldn't do that. God, maybe that's what he did. Maybe it was just a big pile of salt sitting there or, you know, a nice formed pile of salt.
But what I think is more likely the case is that she became encased in molten lava or something molten that fell from the sky, like a big dollop just kind of and got her. And so she's just kind of like encased in, you know, molten lava.
And they didn't have mass spectrometers at the time, so the notion for them to actually be able to test the content of the rock to make sure that it was pure sodium, I'm not confident that that was the case.
I'm also not curious. I don't think anybody went up and licked to see if it tasted like salt. I don't know. How do they know that it was a pillar of salt? Just take the text, okay? So how that all went, I don't know.
But Abraham's seeing the smoke rising from the valley. He goes to the place that overlooks what used to be Sodom and it's, and he can't see Sodom, and its place is smoke like a furnace boiling up out of the valley.
And Abraham is left to conclude there weren't 10. There weren't 10. And I'm sure he's concerned for the fate of his nephew Lot. Lot fled to a small town called Zoar, probably not quite connected yet, probably poor cell cell phone coverage.
So Lot wasn't able to communicate with Abraham that he had made it out alive, you know? And so there's no communication there. So we know what Abraham doesn't. Abraham has a front row seat to the judgment of God, and yet we know that Lot has been spared, but Abraham doesn't even know that.
And now verses 39 are just another awkward part of human history that should make us uncomfortable. Lot moved out of Zoar for fear that his daughter, and takes his daughters up into the hills to live an isolated life in a cave away from the city.
What he's endured has probably been enough to put him off to city life for a while. It's also likely that Zoar had very similar moral values to Sodom. And he goes, I remember what happened to that like yesterday.
So I'm not going to go hang around those people anymore. Maybe he learned his lesson. Either way, he's fearful when he takes his daughters up into the hills, but his daughters have now lost their mother, they've lost their fiancés, they are concerned for offspring, and so they come up with a twisted plan for incest with their father.
Broken sexuality again. On separate nights, they get him drunk and they lie with him. And here in the end of our account of Lot, we find him humiliated, shamed. He's a tragic figure who has been blessed due to his association with his uncle and his uncle's association with God.
But in the end, he has nothing but a cave and offspring and daughters that remind him of their sinfulness. He has raised them in a sexually deviant culture. And my curious question to you is, should he have expected them to act with a sexual moral ethic?
Should that have been his expectation of his daughters? That they have a rock solid understanding of sexual ethics after being raised in Sodom? I don't think so. His oldest daughter has a son and names him Moab, which very uncomfortably means from daddy.
It's a direct translation of that name. And the younger has a son and names him, I guess better, Ben Ami, meaning son of my people. At least that's a little bit vague. This will not be the last that we hear of these people.
The Amorites, I mean Ammonites, will be a people that pester, plague, and oppose the people of Israel all the way down to the very, very end of the Old Testament. They were one of the last groups mentioned by name in opposition to God's people.
As a matter of fact, when Judah is exiled and taken away out of Israel for their sin, judgment, taken out and taken away to Babylon where they are basically placed for I think 70, 80, 90 years while they're in exile, they begin to return.
And Nehemiah, does anybody know what Nehemiah is known for in the Bible? What does he build? He builds walls. So he comes back into Jerusalem to build the walls and there is only one people group mentioned specifically by name as a large mass people group who opposed the rebuilding of the walls at the very end of the Old Testament.
Any guesses? Ammonites. Ammonites are the ones who are opposing them all the way to the very end. People of Moab also have a history of conflict with Israel, but there's an amazing bright spot that comes out of Moab.
A lady named Ruth, a woman from Moab, becomes the grandmother of a little guy named King David. She ends up with a book of the Bible named after her and we find her in one of the most unlikely places, the very beginning of the New Testament, Matthew chapter 1, we find Ruth.
Why do we find Ruth there? She is in the genealogy of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, a woman from Moab. How many of you, how many of you if you were picking, you had the freedom, I mean, how many of you know Jesus had the freedom to pick his own genealogy?
Do you think he was trying to communicate something to us by including people like this? How many of you would put Moab, some, you know, hey, why don't I have my great-great-great-great-grandfather from Moab?
How many would do that? Would you do that? Get a little bit, a little bit of hillbilly in your lineage and I told, I did say that first service and I thought I'm gonna probably get some emails, but I said it again.
So, but I am, all of my family on my mother's side are from, I mean, the sticks of West Virginia, so I feel a little bit more free to make those kind of statements because I'm from there. I maybe have a little Moab back there, I don't know.
I don't, I don't do ancestry .com, so some, some things are better left unknown, right? But God chose, God chose to put somebody from Moab in his lineage for intention to show that nobody is beyond the redemption of God.
I want to conclude with a couple of applications. It's a pretty rough text, judgment, all kinds of, of wicked sexuality and a comfortable look at human wickedness in the text. Would you guys agree with me?
Pretty deep, pretty black. Some applications for us first is an observation about God. By the way, that should be, when you go to apply the text of the Word of God, let me encourage you to let your first thing to be, what should I learn about God as a result of this text?
Let that be first. If you don't get anything else out of, make sure that your view and your understanding of God is from the text and he is just in his judgment. He is not quick, but he is indeed thorough.
Would you agree with me? It's thorough. This account exists to remind us that he has every right to designate what is and isn't acceptable. That's what a judge does, but he also then has the right to enforce those laws by employing justice.
I hope that you can see as clearly as I can the wickedness of Sodom. Do you see them as wicked? But I hope you move past that to see what I think the text would have us point to and understand, and that is the wickedness that resides in our very own hearts.
I hope that you don't walk away, though, thinking, well, Sodom, not that bad, not that bad. How do they deserve that? How dare you, God, judge that city? Probably not. I also hope that you don't walk away thinking that homosexuality was their main offense.
That's the only thing. Okay, so you could walk away and just go, that's it, that's it. This is God's way of just showing that judgment towards homosexuals, not at all. That's not the main point. The second thing I want you to consider is that Lot hesitated and was dragged out of the city by the mercy of God.
Later in Scripture, in 2 Peter, in the New Testament, we see Lot again. Lot is declared righteous, declared righteous, spoken. How many of you know his life didn't match up with that very well? So it's a declaration of him, but it is not reality.
How many would say, oh, I know somebody else like that. I know somebody else who's been declared righteous, but doesn't quite live up to that standard yet. Go ahead and raise your hand if you know somebody like that.
You know, somebody who's been declared righteous, but doesn't quite live that yet. Hopefully, that wasn't, hopefully, that was that hand for yourself. I hope it was. I hope that hand was for yourself, and ribbon the person next to you.
Yeah, you listening to this? Second Peter says he was declared righteous, but that he was super compromised at living in that city. It was not good for him to be living in that city. Peter says he was tormenting.
This is the way that Peter says it in the New Testament, that Lot was tormenting his righteous soul by living in a place where he saw and heard the lawless deeds of Sodom. He had a righteous soul, and it was in torment because he was living in a place that was close to the fire.
And my question to you is, how compromised have you become in our culture? It's become hip and cool. Almost the definition of a hip and cool Christian is how close you are to worldliness, right? How close you are to the fire makes you cool.
We tout our freedom in Christ and then fill our minds with junk and crud and claim, freedom, I'm free. No, free to not sin, free to love God, free to love others. Now, I mean, we are, in essence, free to torment our own souls, right?
We can do that. We could choose that. But my question to each one of us is, how close are you to the flames? How close have you set up shop near the flames? Are you sitting down in the gate? Are you calling brothers to those who are, ultimately, have a plan for your soul that is not with God?
Another way to ask this is, if God sent an angel to your home and told you, flee, because judgment was imminent. You see, depending that you're convinced that it's an angel from God, but I mean, just play with this for a second.
Would you hesitate? And then the question is, what kind of things would hold you here? What kind of things would keep you from going to the deliverance of God? How close are you to the flames? That's the primary question.
Last thing I want to point out is that God can take these human messes, would you agree, human messes? Pretty messed up, and still work through them to bring about redemption. That lots descendants make it back into the line of Christ is scandalous and shocking.
An entire nation brought about by incest, and Jesus has a woman from that nation in his lineage. I've mentioned many times that God has nothing but broken people to work with, and I'm glad that he extends the opportunity for repentance to all, and that he can even use you or me.
He can use Lot. He can use Moab. He can use sinners, and that is rejoicing. That is exciting. That is something that excites me because that puts me in the bounds of useful to God. If he has to have a perfect person, I shouldn't be standing here.
So my encouragement to you is everyone here who has asked Jesus to save you from the coming judgment, and the judgment is coming, but if you've asked Jesus to save you from that coming judgment, then please join together in communion to remember the sacrifice that was required to set us free from that judgment.
Oh, the judgment is no less real for those of you who are in Christ than for those who are not. It's just that the judgment was taken by Jesus. Do you get it? Every single person is going to in some way go through judgment.
It's just that those in Jesus get to point to the cross and say, that is where my judgment was paid. It's not that I'm, not that we're righteous, not that we're better than everybody else. It's that our price has been paid.
Jesus took the wrath, directed at us on himself, that by faith in him we may be set free from the ultimate judgment. So as we take the cracker and we remember the body of Jesus broken for us, we take the juice and remember his blood that was shed for us, and we just genuinely rejoice in this amazing gift of freedom from his wrath.
Get a picture of it here, and it's not pretty. It's real. And then may that motivate us to move out from this place that as we walk through this doors, it is a mission field. It is a place where people are going to come under the wrath of God with no umbrella of Jesus, no protection, nobody that has taken their wrath.
They're like, I can do it myself. When you say, I can do it myself, you're saying, I will take my own punishment. Thank you very much. And that is a terrifying, and we rejoice in salvation, but equally let it motivate us to bring the good news to those around us, coworkers, friends, neighbors, people that, people in your family that don't know.
Not beating him over the head or dropping a Jesus bomb on him, but loving them, showing them love, and demonstrating to them what Jesus has done for you. Share your testimony with them, and then let each one of us consider how close we are to the flames as well.
As we take communion, reflect and think as you hold those in your hand. None of us are worthy of it. I'm not asking you to be worthy of it. I'm not asking you to confess your sin enough to be worthy of this sacrifice.
That's not going to happen. You might as well pass it by if you think you're able to do that. Take them knowing that you're a sinner and say, Jesus, show me where I've compromised. Show me where I've lived too close to the flame, and then change me by the power of your spirit.
Let's pray. Fathers, we encounter this text. It's messy. There's a lot of crud and junk in it, and a lot of, wow, a lot of us in it, to be honest. There's a lot of sin, and we look in our own hearts, and our sin may not be homosexuality.
It might not be the illicit, severe sexuality that we see in this culture. We are certainly broken people. There's nobody in here that doesn't know that they are broken. So Father, I ask that you would deal with us by your mercy and by your grace, and for those who are here who maybe have gone it alone so far and have said, I can do this on my own.
I can be good enough. I can work it myself. Father, I pray that nobody walks out of these doors under your just wrath and judgment, but that they would come and talk with me if they are not in Christ, if they don't even know what that phrase in Christ means, if that's a mysterious statement to them, and that they would come and talk with me or with Rob or someone who can lead them to the truth.
Father, I thank you for Jesus, and that the wrath that I deserve is no longer on me, but was poured out on Him. Praise you for that sacrifice in Jesus' name. Amen. Heavenly Father, as we reflect on the message, the sobering message of your judgment, your righteous judgment on sin, Father, we do reflect on our sin, and as we take these communion elements, we're reminded of your sacrifice.
Father, may we find a humble and contrite spirit in our own hearts. Lord, may we just humble ourselves, Father, as we confess sin, and may we just turn to you humbly this week as we go out. Lord, may we be filled with joy, the joy of our salvation that is in you and in you alone.
Father, I thank you for what you've done to rescue us. I pray we would go out in your joy and in your strength and in the power that you give us. Pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Go in God's peace.