Sermon: The Angels in Sodom

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I am going to invite everyone to take notes today, and I will explain to you why.

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I especially want to speak to the young people amongst us.

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I want you to be aware of the fact that it is my desire today to help prepare you to engage in conversation with the world around us on an important text of Scripture.

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Now, I believe that my wife and I are supposed to be heading over to my daughter's house after the service today.

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My grandchildren are in the second row. Hi guys, how are you doing? I may have some questions for you about tonight's sermon while we're eating, just so you know.

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Just a little warning ahead of time, you know. Dessert may be dependent on your answers, let's just put it that way.

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This is for everyone. I want all the young people to listen today as we look through a passage of Scripture and seek to understand what

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God would have us to understand. Genesis chapters 18 and 19. Genesis chapters 18 and 19.

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We do not have time. Notice that Pastor Jeff got his sermon in one way or the other already.

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So I need to be sensitive to the clock and sensitive to the mothers with little children.

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So I will be somewhat brief on some of the background material. When people, this is as we started last year, working with our brothers in Canada, the

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Canadian regime had just passed a law in essence limiting the freedom of Christians in that nation to speak on the subject of what the

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Bible teaches about human sexuality and God's creative purpose in it. And so in the

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United States, in Canada, in Europe, faithful churches are standing up and on this day are speaking the truth about what

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Scripture says on a subject that very obviously is being used to fundamentally corrupt the lives of young men and women all across this world.

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God has made us to function in a certain way and when we choose to rebel against His ways, the results, well, we're seeing them all around us.

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Many, many years ago now, I co -authored a book called The Same -Sex

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Controversy with Pastor Jeff Neal. We had the opportunity of engaging in debate on a local radio station that led to the writing of this particular book.

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And in that book, the section on Sodom and Gomorrah, I can tell you, was written by myself and at that time

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I could not have imagined what was going to happen over the next 20 years in regards to the massive flood of books that would come out.

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I thought I had to read far too many books in 2000 and 2001 that sought to find a way to revise what the

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Bible teaches. But the number of books that have come out since then is absolutely astonishing.

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And so what has happened is there are a certain number of texts and you know the texts, we've gone over these things many times before.

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Last year, I believe, we specifically dealt with the term arsenokoites and we dealt with Leviticus 18 and 20 and Paul's utilization of that language when he writes to the

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Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 6, when he writes to Timothy in 1 Timothy 1. And you can go online today and you can find literally dozens of revisionist explanations for every passage that you can find in Scripture that will give you clarity in regards to what

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God's purposes are in mankind and human sexuality.

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But of all of them, the one that I think most Christians, most people in Christian churches have given in on is

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Genesis 18 and 19. Now you know the story. You probably know it very, very well.

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Let's just sort of summarize it very quickly as we look at it. In Genesis 18, three men appear to Abraham.

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We know by the end of the story that these are two angels and what we can only call a theophany.

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That is, the one that stays with Abraham and speaks with Abraham, with whom

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Abraham has this lengthy discussion beginning in verse 16 of chapter 18 when he is made privy to what's going to be happening in Sodom and Gomorrah.

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But the angels are being sent down to find out if it's really as bad as it's been reported.

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You have that discussion where Abraham, knowing that Lot is there, seeks to try to...

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Well, if there's 50, if there's 40, if there's 10 righteous, will you spare the city?

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You have Abraham trying to intercede in a sense because he knows.

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How does he know? It's interesting. Turn with me back to Genesis 13. There's a little statement that is often missed.

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Take a note, because I want you to be able to explain this text to others.

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I want you to be confident because there are so many today who call themselves

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Christians, who seek to revise the biblical teaching on these matters.

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Genesis 13. It just sort of slides in here.

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Lot is going out his direction, and it says, now the men of Sodom.

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In the original language, that's very specific. It's not some general, oh, the people of Sodom.

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No. The men uses the Hebrew term specifically in reference to males.

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The men of Sodom were evil and sinners exceedingly so against Yahweh.

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The men of Sodom were. There's no further discussion of it. It's just a statement is made.

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The men of Sodom were evil and sinners exceedingly so against Yahweh. Now, Abraham knew that.

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Abraham was well aware of that, and that's why you have his attempt to save the city for the sake of Lot.

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If you can find ten righteous men. Notice at the end of chapter 18. Then he said,

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Oh, may the Lord not be angry, and I shall speak only this once. Suppose ten are found there. And he said, I will not destroy it on account of the ten.

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As soon as he had finished speaking to Abraham, Yahweh departed, and Abraham returned to his place. And so here's the context of chapter 19.

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Let's read it together. Then the two angels... I'm going to put my old man glasses on here.

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Then the two angels came to Sodom in the evening as Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. Lot saw them and rose to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground.

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And he said, Now behold, my lords, please turn aside into your servants' house and spend the night and wash your feet.

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Then you may rise early and go on your way. They said, however, No, but we shall spend the night in the square.

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Yet he pressed them strongly. So they turned aside to him and entered his house, and he made a feast for them and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.

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Before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, again that technical term for males, surrounded the house from young to old.

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All the people from every quarter. And they called to Lot and said to him,

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Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may know them.

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But Lot went out to them at the doorway and shut the door behind him and said, Please, my brothers, do not act wickedly.

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Now behold, I have two daughters who have not known a man. Please let me bring them out to you and do them what is good in your eyes.

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Only do nothing to these men inasmuch as they have come under the shelter of my roof. But they said,

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Step aside. Furthermore, they said, This one came to sojourn, and already he is persistently acting like a judge.

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Now we will treat you more wickedly than them. So they pressed hard against Lot and stepped up to break the door.

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But the men reached out their hands and 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, from small to great, so that they wearied themselves trying to find the doorway.

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Then the two men said to Lot, Whom else have you here? A son -in -law and your sons and your daughters and everyone you have in the city.

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Bring them out of the place, for we are about to destroy this place because their outcry has become great before Yahweh, so Yahweh has sent us to destroy it.

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And Lot went out and spoke to his sons -in -law, who were to marry his daughters, and said, Get up, get out of this place, for Yahweh will destroy the city.

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But he appeared to his son -in -laws to be jesting. At the breaking of dawn, the angels urged

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Lot, saying, Get up, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be swept away in the punishment of the city.

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But he hesitated. So the men seized his hand and the hand of his wife and the hands of his two daughters, for the compassion of Yahweh was upon him.

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And they brought him out and put him outside the city. Now it happened. As they brought them outside, one said,

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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.

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But Lot said to them, Oh no, my lords. Behold, your servants are in favor in your sight and you have magnified your loving kindness, which you have shown me by preserving my life.

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But I cannot escape to the mountains, lest calamity overtake me and I die. Now behold, this town is near enough to flee to it.

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It is small. Please let me escape there. Is it not small that my life may be preserved?

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And he said to him, Behold, I grant you this request also that I will not overthrow the city of which you have spoken.

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Hurry, escape there, for I cannot do anything until you arrive there. Therefore, the name of the city was called

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Zoar. The sun had risen over the earth when Lot came to Zoar and Yahweh reigned on Sodom and Gomorrah, brimstone and fire, from Yahweh out of heaven.

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Please note that. And he overthrew those cities and all the valley and all the inhabitants of the cities and what grew on the ground.

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Then his wife from behind him looked back and she became a pillar of salt. Abraham arose early in the morning and went to the place where he had stood before Yahweh and he looked down towards Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the valley and he saw and behold, the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace.

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Thus it happened, when God destroyed the cities of the valley, that God remembered Abraham and sent

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Lot out of the midst of the overthrow when he overthrew the cities in which Lot lived.

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Now, here are the issues. Down through the history of the church it has been clearly understood that the fundamental and triggering evil of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah was homosexuality.

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It was not the only evil of Sodom and Gomorrah. There were clearly other evils taking place in those cities as we will see in the

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New Testament. Lot's soul was tortured within him by the evil that he saw regularly.

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But there was a specific focus. It's always been understood because when you read the text, it's the men of Sodom demanding that the angels be brought out.

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They think they're men, that they might know them, yada. Believe it or not, one of the primary arguments is it has nothing to do with sexuality.

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Yeah, this was the welcome wagon. None of you are old enough probably to remember years and years and years ago there was something called the welcome wagon.

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You move into a new neighborhood and people would come over and they'd bring food and stuff like that.

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Now you're scared as to who's moving into the neighborhood and you don't want to do anything like that. But certainly that's the way things used to be.

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And so there's some who would say, well, they just wanted to greet these men. As we will see when we walk through the text, that is not substantiated by what is written there.

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The church has always understood that the primary focus, the reason for the utter overthrow, because you must understand, it wasn't just the men who died that day.

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It was the women. It was the children. It was the little doggies and kitties and gerbils.

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There wasn't anything left of those cities. They were utterly destroyed by God.

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Why? The church has had one understanding until the past 40 years.

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And then all of a sudden, new ideas have crept in. But before we deal with them, let's walk through it quickly.

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But look at what is being said. There are some very important clues right in front of us.

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First of all, please notice, Lot seems to understand there's something special about these men.

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He bows down his face to the ground. Now remember something. This is early in human history. And one thing you need to understand background -wise was the necessity of showing hospitality to travelers.

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You couldn't call the AAA. There was massive distances between the small number of human settlements.

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And this continues to this day in many of those cultures. This idea of hospitality, this idea of bringing people into your home, of giving them food when they come into your home, they are under your protection.

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This goes all the way back to the beginning. And you see it here in the way

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Lot is responding to these individuals. When someone comes into your home, you take care of them.

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This was considered to be absolute necessary human behavior at this point in time.

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And so he says, Now behold, my lords, please turn aside into your servants' house. Boy, he does this quickly.

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You sense the urgency in his part? Come into my home. Spend the night.

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Wash your feet. Then you may rise early and go on your way. Why early?

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Does it seem like Lot knows something's going on here? That they're in danger?

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That visitors coming to this place are in danger? Especially if they're men?

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I would imagine as angels they probably weren't ugly. They were probably attractive men.

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But notice what they say. They said, however, No, but we shall spend the night in the square.

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That's a test. That's a test. Because immediately

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Lot says, Yet he pressed them strongly.

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He knew. You stay in the open square of that city. He knew what would happen.

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He pressed them strongly so they turned aside to him. And so he does what you're supposed to do.

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Does a feast. Baked unleavened bread. They eat. Maybe he thought by the time they got done eating, that was close.

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Oh, that was close. Looks like I got away with it. Looks like I got him in here. Doesn't look like anybody saw.

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He was wrong. Before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom.

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Do you get the idea? That the text is trying to tell us something? Please note, it repeats it twice.

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And it's using the specific term for males. Not just a generic phrase.

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The men of the city, the men of Sodom, surrounded the house.

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And notice how extensive this is. From young to old. All the people from every quarter.

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These are all the men. There aren't any exceptions. Everything's represented.

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Rich and poor. And they called to Lot and said to him, Where are the men who came to you tonight?

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His heart must have sunk. Bring them out to us that we may know them.

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Now again, oh, they just wanted to know who these strangers were. They wanted to greet them. They had little visitor cards.

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They'll pack it with some cookies. Things like that. Lot knows better and you should too.

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And anybody who reads this text should likewise know better. Because Lot went out to them at the doorway and shut the door behind him and said,

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Please, my brothers, do not act wickedly. They weren't trying to find out if these were spies from another city.

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That's one of the ideas. He knew that this was a wicked request.

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The Hebrew term to know, yadah, can simply mean to know something as a fact.

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But it's also the exact same term that is used when it says that Adam knew his wife

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Eve and she conceived and brought forth a son. So yadah is not simply the idea of having intellectual knowledge.

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It can have a very personal, intimate, and in fact, in this context, sexual meaning.

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And so they are asking Lot, Bring these men out. We want to engage in sexual behavior with them.

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And Lot says, Please, my brothers, do not act wickedly.

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Something tells me that that was the last thing they heard by how they respond.

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What do I mean? Well, notice in verse 9. This one came to sojourn.

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They know Lot's not one of them. And already he is persistently acting like a judge.

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Now we will treat you more wickedly than them. One thing is very, very clear. Unrepentant men do not want to have their sin identified as wickedness.

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And have you noticed something? What's happening in our society today? And again, I started dealing with this 20 years ago.

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And I said at that time, I said, homosexuals do not want equal rights.

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They want Uber rights. I said at that time, they want us to celebrate their sexual choices.

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I could not have had any idea at that time that in only 20 years

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I'd be living in a nation where in our embassies around the world under the

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American flag we fly the flag of the LGBTQ movement and push it in the faces of everyone around the world, including nations where you don't do these types of things.

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I couldn't have imagined it. But today in our schools and at government decree, you are to celebrate these things.

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And if you don't celebrate it, you're a bigot. You're filled with hate. How long ago was this?

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That when Lot dared to say, do not act wickedly, oh, we'll now treat you worse than we were going to treat them.

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Now, I don't have time to go through all of it, but let me just say, verse 8 is troubling for everyone.

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Verse 8 is troubling for everyone. There would be many who would simply say, here is an example of how denigrated women were at this time in history, that Lot would even think to offer his two daughters, his virgin daughters, to these people.

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And maybe that's exactly what he was doing. But Hebrews describes

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Lot as a righteous man. And I've often thought, as I have pondered this text,

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Lot knew these men. He sat in the city gate. He knew their character.

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All he was doing was buying time because they weren't going to touch them with a ten -foot pole. That's not what they wanted.

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That's not what they would want. Is that possible? It's only one verse.

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Will we find out someday? Well, that's certainly one of those things I'd like to find out personally. But notice something.

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Only do nothing these men inasmuch as they have come under the shelter of my roof. Again, in this culture, and it continues to this day in many cultures in that part of the world, when you come under someone's roof, there is a legal requirement, it is a cultural requirement that you protect these individuals.

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If you're familiar with the... What was it called? Lone Survivor? The book a couple years ago about the

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Navy SEAL team. And the one individual that survived just an incredible experience.

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He was brought into a village in Afghanistan.

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And those villagers gave him protection and hence were willing to die at the hands of other villagers from other villages because they had granted to him that protection.

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It continues to this very day. This amazing commitment that if you've brought someone under your roof, there is this necessity on your part.

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And there you see it in verse 8. They have come under the shelter of my roof. They reject this.

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Step aside. They say, you're acting like a judge.

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Don't say that what we're doing is wicked. So they press hard against Lot and stepped up to break the door.

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But the men, who we know are angels, reached out their hands and brought

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Lot into the house with them and shut the door. I have a feeling angels are probably fairly physically strong.

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Okay? Don't think that's an issue for them. And then one of the most amazing pictures

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I've ever seen of human depravity. Verse 11.

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And they struck the men who were at the doorway of the house with blindness from small to great.

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Now stop for a second. Think about that. What if you were there?

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What if you were one of the younger men? And this is what you've grown up with. This is what you've grown up with.

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You think this is how things are supposed to be done. So you're just going along with the crowd. Then all of a sudden, everything turns black.

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You've lost your sight. You can't see. Now, the first thought across your mind is going to be, oh my goodness, what's happened to me?

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But what's going to happen within 15 seconds of that? You're going to hear other people saying they've lost their sight.

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I can't see! And you're going to hear it from someone else. And then someone else.

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It's not going to take long before you realize everyone in that group is blind.

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You're bumping into each other. You're feeling hands and arms. And everyone's crying out.

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I can't see! Now think with me for a second. Once you realize that everyone engaging in your behavior has now lost their sight, what's the logical thing to do?

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Stop. But have you ever noticed what the rest of the verse says?

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Look. So that they wearied themselves, what?

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Trying to find the doorway. They wearied themselves trying to find the doorway.

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They didn't stop. They were struck blind.

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Ain't going to stop us. Not going to stop us. I don't know that I've ever seen a greater example of being given over.

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You talk about Romans 1, Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts. Here people are given over.

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I may be blind, but I'm going to keep trying. It's amazing.

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They wearied themselves trying to find the doorway. So what happens next?

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Two men. Lot? This city is going to be destroyed.

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Lot by now recognizes maybe by the power they had in being able to pull him in and close the door. I don't know, but Lot now knows he's dealing with supernatural individuals here.

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And that they have come to bring judgment. You would think that given the time that Lot was in that city, he would have known judgment will come eventually.

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And so now it's come. But he hesitates. Oh yes, he goes to his son -in -laws.

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To those that were betrothed anyways to his daughters. They can't believe it.

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You know when you proclaim judgment, people just don't believe it. They happen to know his day.

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Judgment's coming. And if you want to make people laugh today, if you want to see

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Jimmy Fallon or somebody else do a comedy skit, what do you do? Repent!

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Judgment's coming! And that's what they think.

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So they won't come. So the angel's like, but we have to go. And Lot hesitates.

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God would have been completely just to go, okay, angels, come on out.

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Nuke it. Because the description we have is pretty close to nuke it.

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That's fire and brimstone? Yeah, that sort of sounds like what happened.

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But instead, God's mercy is on them. And even in the midst of this, it still shocks me that Lot's like,

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I'm sort of scared of the mountains. There's this little city over here.

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Can we go there instead? Okay, all right already.

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Go there. But then notice something. Don't miss what's in verse 24.

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It's one of the most important Christological Trinitarian texts in Genesis.

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And it gets missed because our minds are focused on something else. Remember what's going on here.

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We've had three men walk up to Abraham by the Oaks of Mamre, chapter 18.

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Two of them have gone down to Sodom and Gomorrah. They're angels. They're identified as such. The one that walks with Abraham is identified as who?

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As Yahweh. As Yahweh. Yahweh is walking with Abraham.

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But then look at verse 24. And Yahweh rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from Yahweh out of heaven.

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You've got Yahweh on earth bringing fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah from Yahweh in heaven.

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Now folks, there aren't two Yahwehs. There aren't three Yahwehs. But here you have a very, very important text.

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I don't know if any of you caught last week on The Dividing Line, my webcast,

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I did a thing on witnessing to Jehovah's Witnesses. And one of the things that I emphasized was for Witnesses, the most important thing you can communicate to them is that Jesus is identified by the

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New Testament writers as Yahweh. A Jehovah's Witness will argue with you forever whether Jesus is

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God or a God. But the fact of the matter is if he's Yahweh, Jehovah as they mispronounce it, that's the end of the debate.

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And here is an example where you have the one who walks with Abraham.

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Now Abraham wasn't walking with his eyes covered. He saw these men. Yet John 1 .18

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says no one's seen the Father at any time. Who did they see? The Son. He is the one who makes known the

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Father. So here is a pre -incarnate appearance of Jesus and he's identified as who?

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Yahweh. Just like in John 12 .41. Isaiah's temple vision, he sees

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Yahweh on his throne. According to John 12 .41, who was he seeing? Jesus. Jesus identified as Yahweh.

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And here you have it in Genesis 19 .24. Yahweh reigned on Sodom and Gomorrah, brimstone and fire from Yahweh out of heaven.

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Now, all right. We see the issues before us.

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Now here's the question. How do people get around this?

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Well, here's the primary argument you're going to hear. And you're going to hear this from pulpits across the land.

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You're going to hear this in Bible study departments. You're going to hear this in seminaries. You're going to hear it over and over and over again so often that like I said,

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I think the majority of people in the United States anyways who even are familiar with what texts are relevant to the subject of homosexuality, stay away from Sodom and Gomorrah.

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And here's how they do it. Now, promise me not to do what you all have been trained to do, and that is read the context.

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Let me have a moment. Turn with me to Ezekiel 16. Ezekiel 16.

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And if you've done any digging of this, you all can testify. You will see this over and over and over and over again online.

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I saw it at least three times this week. At least three times this week. They will have you read

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Ezekiel 16, and they'll have you focus specifically on verses 48 and 49.

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As I live, declares Lord Yahweh, Sodom your sister and her daughters have not done as you and your daughters have done.

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Behold, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom. She and her daughters had lofty pride, abundant food, and quiet ease, but she did not strengthen the hand of the afflicted and the needy.

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There it is. See? You bigot. Your own

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Bible tells you. The sin of Sodom was inhospitability. See? It's right there.

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It says it very clearly. She and her daughters had lofty pride, abundant food, and quiet ease, but she did not strengthen the hand of the afflicted and needy.

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And that's why God destroyed them. If you just read your Bible, you'd know this, right?

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There it is. Well, we all know you have to read in context.

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I remember the first time I ran into this revisionist argument. It was in a book by a Roman Catholic priest named Daniel Helminiak.

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And that's all he quoted. And so I did what I always do. You read the verses before and you read the verses after.

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And if you read verse 50, it sort of changes everything. Then they were haughty and committed abominations before me, so I removed them when

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I saw it. That term abominations, the

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Hebrew term toevah. There's a lot of things that are described as toevah in the

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Hebrew Old Testament. But what's interesting is the sexual sin described in the Mosaic law as toevah is what?

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Homosexuality. Homosexuality. That's the sin. So over and over again,

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I have seen memes and all sorts of things where you have verses 48 and 49 quoted, never verse 50.

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They never give you the rest of the context that everyone who read the Old Testament originally would have had.

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They don't give it to you. Man, that's effective today because how many people do you know that have actually read all of Ezekiel?

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Not very many. It's very, very effective. Now, like I said, was the only sin of Sodom and Gomorrah homosexuality?

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No. Sin is never alone. It's never alone. So is it appropriate to talk about the fact that Lot could provide a feast for these men?

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They had food. They had a city. They weren't under siege from enemies.

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They were rich in the city, and yet they behaved this way.

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Yes, there were probably many sins you could accuse them of, but it says specifically, they were haughty and committed abominations before me, so I removed them when

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I what? When I saw it. Is that not the language that's used in Genesis 18 and 19 where it says,

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I'm going to send the angels down to see, to see what will they do in the presence of angelic visitors?

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Well, we know what they did, and we know what God did as a result. He destroyed them.

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So when they go to Ezekiel 16, you know you need to just read the next verse because that will be in a very important aspect of what we're looking at.

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Now, what about the New Testament? There's a couple passages we need to look at briefly in the

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New Testament that will give us a little bit more information, and they're both found in those little books toward the end of the

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New Testament, Jude and 2 Peter. So turn with me to Jude and 2 Peter right toward the end.

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Both have very similar concerns and a focus. So let's look at 2

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Peter 2. 2 Peter 2. Verse 4.

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For if God did not spare angels who sinned, but cast them into the pit and delivered them into chains of darkness being kept for judgment, and did not spare the ancient world but preserved

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Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others when he brought them a flood upon the world ungodly, and if 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 lives thereafter, and if he rescued righteous

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Lot oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men, for by what he saw and heard that righteous man while living among them felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds, then the

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Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment." Now think about that.

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Are you seriously going to suggest to me that the daily trial that his soul was tormented day after day by their lawless deeds was they were always, every day, rude to travelers?

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They were inhospitable! Right. Okay. Yeah, that fits the entire context really, really well, doesn't it?

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No, it doesn't, actually. It doesn't at all. Clearly the lawless deeds that they were convicted for fit with what we already know and have already seen in the pages of Scripture.

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Turn to the little book of Jude, right after 3 John, verses 6 -7.

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And angels who did not keep their own domain but abandoned their proper abode, he is kept in eternal bonds under darkness to the judgment of the great day, just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, having indulged in the same way as these in gross sexual immorality and having gone after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.

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So here is Jude's interpretation of what takes place, that they indulged in gross sexual immorality and went after strange flesh.

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Now, some people say, well, that's right there. It wasn't homosexuality.

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They wanted to have sex with angels. Oh, they knew they were angels? I can understand how a lot might have come to that conclusion eventually.

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They didn't know they were angels. When it says they went after strange flesh, that is simply one way of expressing the idea of lust for what you're not supposed to have lust for, that unnatural desire of same -sex intimacy is described as gross sexual immorality.

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And as a result, they were exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.

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You have to simply turn this book upside down and inside out to get rid of its clear testimony.

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But didn't Jesus once make reference, didn't he talk about it's going to be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah, and he wasn't talking about homosexuality.

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He didn't have to. It was already well known to the people of his day.

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They understood the level of immorality that brought God's judgment upon that nation, that city, city -state.

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He didn't have to make the application. He was saying you all have

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God's law written on the scrolls next to Moses' seat in the synagogue and you ignore it.

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They had nothing. They didn't have the law. And look what

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God did to them. You have much more light than them. You're going to be overthrown. That was the point of the illustration.

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So there is no question about what the Bible says on the subject of Sodom and Gomorrah.

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But I'm not up here just to make it possible for you to win a debate in Facebook on Monday.

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Oh, I've got my notes. I'm ready to go. It was so long ago that it's easy for us to push things aside and not think about what happened in Sodom and Gomorrah.

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When those men walked through the city gates, what had that day been like?

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Oh, probably like any other day. People had bought and sold.

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People were eating their food and enjoying maybe some sports back then.

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I bet they did. Maybe there had been a big match that day of whatever kind of games you played in the ancient world.

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Life just was going on. But see, settled rebellion against God's ways had become the everyday experience of the people of that land.

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Sound familiar, my friends? Does it sound familiar?

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That's what we're experiencing. Have you been to San Francisco recently?

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June's coming. Oh no. You know what I mean? Every website you open.

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Pride! Is it so different today than it was that day that the angels arrived?

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And within 24 hours, every single living creature in that entire valley was scorched and dead.

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Now there's a lot of people, a lot of Christians that do not believe that God would ever do something like that.

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Jesus said He did. I don't understand anyone who can look at Jesus on the cross and then question

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His understanding of the Scriptures, He said, that were necessary to be fulfilled in Him.

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Don't wear that around your neck and then question what the Scriptures say

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God did in judgment, just judgment upon the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. Those are the same people who don't believe that God ever brought a worldwide flood either.

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You're going to disconnect the whole thing. It doesn't make any sense when you do that. But we can never look at these examples of God's judgment without realizing what we ourselves have been rescued from.

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Because apart from the grace of God, you, every man in this room, would be standing outside of Lot's house apart from God's grace.

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It's so easy for us to look at, oh, we're so much better. No, we're not. There's only one five -letter word that's going to spell the difference between those who bow and worship around the throne of God in eternity and those who stand upon the parapets of hell screaming their hatred of God, and it's the five -letter word called grace.

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It's the five -letter word called grace. Never look down your nose in righteous indignation against those who justly receive

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God's judgment because it could have been us. It could have been us. So what do we have to say to our nation?

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Judgment is real. Judgment is real. Repentance is necessary.

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And there is a way to live in peace in this world.

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But it's not by following your own heart. It's by listening to what God says in His Word.

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Now, one last exhortation. Yes, I want you to be able to explain these things.

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Parents to your children, grandparents to your children and your grandchildren, all of us need to be prepared to know and to understand and give a defense, a reason for the hope that's within us.

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But if there is any, in the sound of my voice right now, that experienced same -sex attraction,

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I want you to know, yes, God says it's evil, and God says

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He can make a way of escape. He can make a way of escape.

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In 1 Corinthians 6, an entire list of sins, including without question homosexuality, is given by the

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Apostle Paul, and he says do not be deceived. People who do this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

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And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were cleansed, you were justified in the name of the

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Lord Jesus Christ and the Spirit of our God. There is hope.

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There is forgiveness. It's not to be found in man's psychology.

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It's not to be found in some type of therapy. It is to be found in a new heart, in a renewed mind.

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The description of salvation is taking out that heart of stone and giving a heart of flesh.

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And that is for anyone who is repentant and comes to the

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Lord Jesus Christ. You will always find Him to be a powerful Savior. Let's pray together.

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Our Heavenly Father, as we have sought to listen to Your Word, to allow all of it to speak, we pray that You would cause us to remember that we would handle

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Your Word aright, that we would be light in a dark world, and that Lord, when we do seek to bring correction to error, that we would do so always with the recognition that apart from the grace of God, we too will be walking in darkness and deception.

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Father, we do pray for those who have been given false teaching about what Your Word says.

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Give us the opportunity of bringing correction. Honor Yourself by vindicating

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Your Word. But Lord, if there be any amongst us who indeed struggle with this very issue,

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Lord, help them to hear Your Word that says, such were some of you, but you were washed, you were cleansed.

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There is hope for the person who will turn to Jesus Christ. Father, we live in a wicked land.

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Teach us what it means to be faithful in the midst of great wickedness.

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Use us, Father, to bring Your message of hope to the world. We pray in Christ's name,