Remembering Lot and His Wife

Well, this morning, we continue on in Genesis chapter 19. And we'll take up where we left off last week in verse 12 and look to verse 26.

Last week, we saw really the outflow, or at least the beginning of the outflow of Abraham's intercession in Genesis 18.

And so we see the beginning of a very, very gracious deliverance of God, who, though there are not 10 found righteous within Sodom, nevertheless, out of abundant mercy, really answers the heart of Abram's intercession, the heart of Abram's hope.

He delivers Lot and even Lot's family, in part. And so this is a very gracious deliverance on the part of God.

It's not what he had agreed to or committed to Abraham. It's super abundant grace on top of that, given the failure of Sodom to produce 10 that were able to save the city.

And we saw in Lot's treatment of the angels something of his righteous character last week that, in fact,

Lot truly is as 2 Peter 2 declares him to be. That's difficult to see in different ways, as we'll see even again this morning.

But we must understand what Peter wants us to understand about Lot's character. And I hope we'll see glimpses of that at different moments today.

2 Peter 2, beginning in verse 6. God, the question is, if God, so if God, turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them to destruction, making them an example to those who afterward would live ungodly, and delivered righteous

Lot, who was oppressed by the filthy conduct of the wicked, for that righteous man dwelling among them tormented his righteous soul from day to day by seeing and hearing their lawless deeds.

So then the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations and to reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment.

So Lot here is implicitly called godly and thrice called righteous.

Righteous Lot, a righteous man with a righteous soul. That's the testimony of scripture, though as we'll see, there's all sorts of pockmarks and cankers and blemishes on that righteous man.

Sounds very familiar to us as believers, or at least it ought to. This morning we want to consider more about Lot.

And so we're gonna look at verses 12 through 26 in four ways. First, Lot's calling. Second, Lot's lingering.

Third, Lot's intercession. And fourth and last, Lot's wife. And so we begin with Lot's calling.

The angels reveal their intention to Lot. Perhaps along with that, they reveal their divine identity.

Not only their divine mission, but now their divine identity. They urge him to gather his family and escape from the destruction that is to come.

The men said to Lot, this is verse 12 into 13, have you anyone else here? Son -in -law, your sons, your daughters, and whomever you have in the city, take them out of this place, for we will destroy this place because the outcry against them has grown great before the face of the

Lord, and the Lord has sent us to destroy it. So there's the great revelation. We have to picture, of course, this is part of the sequence of this whole disastrous night.

It was very late when these men arrived by the gate of Sodom. So late that Lot tried to hurry together a meal of unleavened bread and set it before them.

And then, of course, the attempted assault from all these depraved men, both young and old of Sodom, surrounding like demonic herd of swine, calling to be able to assault sexually.

First, these two men, and then Lot, after they refuse, these little girls that they watched grow up, who were betrothed to fellow

Sodomites. Wicked, depraved men. Think of how exhausting this was.

And then, of course, the angels struck these men blind. That is a supernatural blindness, as we said last week.

And then in weariness, they finally give up, pounding the walls and looking for that doorway.

And perhaps by now, it's almost the twilight hours, and perhaps it's still dark out, and Lot's completely exhausted.

And then here comes this great revelation. The city's about to be destroyed, up and out. Gather your family, anyone you have in this city.

So picture it, if you could, pitch black, and maybe just the beginning of the grays of the sun, hiding still behind the horizon, beginning to slowly turn up that dimness that comes in the twilight hours.

And you can imagine now, in the midst of that exhaustion of being up through that night, the terror and the adrenaline that now hits

Lot, as his heart drops into his feet at the realization of what has just been revealed to him.

The city is going to be destroyed, and all who are in it, unless you go and gather them up, will be destroyed along with it.

There's a storm coming. It's interesting how psychologically the question of what's that going to involve, what will that look like, how can

I prepare, what am I in for, what do I need? Some of us have had to go through that.

Is this okay to stay on the deck, or is this going to become a projectile that flies into my living room? Do I need more water, will

I need candles? Do we have a way to heat up the canned soup? You begin to think through the scenario.

What am I in for? How can I best prepare? What damage will there be? For Lot, this is times a million.

What can I grab, how will I go about, and how much time do I have? And so Lot went out.

It's almost like there has to be more than that. He must have rushed out like a whirlwind, spoke to his son.

That's not a speaking, that's a pleading as we'll see. Verse 14, Lot went out, spoke to his son's -in -law, who had married his daughters, better translation, betrothed.

Remember, the daughters have not experienced men yet. They do not know a man as they're being offered.

And so they're betrothed, which legally is binding in the ancient Near East, and therefore they are truly his son -in -laws.

However, there's not an actual marriage that's been consummated. So he goes to his son's -in -laws, who had married, in other words, betrothed his daughters, and said, get up, get out of this place.

The Lord will destroy the city. But to his son's -in -law, he seemed to be joking.

You can picture Lot banging on the doors. Again, it's not even morning yet.

The sun has not even begun to rise yet. In other words, he's waking them up out of bed, banging on the door.

They're half startled, half awake, stumbling down. What's this all about? Clearly, something is wrong.

Perhaps they had never seen Lot in this state. He was a dignified man. He used to be a noble. He sat in the city gate.

In the ancient Near East, that meant everywhere he went, he had decorum, he had honor and integrity. He walked around.

In fact, when that mob was angry, this man is more righteous than us. We're gonna do worse to him. He almost had this character that was repugnant to them.

But they've never seen him like this. He's wild -eyed. He's panicked. He's in terror. Clearly, something is wrong.

What's happened? What is it, Lot? In the reply, get up. Get out of this place. The Lord is going to destroy the city.

Now, notice that Lot does not need to explain the Lord. There's a little hint that he can reference the

Lord and they have some intimation of what he's saying or who he's referencing. Adonai, this is the one that Lot serves and this is the

God of Abraham and the God of Lot. Perhaps he had shared this or they saw the devotion of Lot in his life, who he prayed to, who he worshiped toward.

So Lot does not need to explain the Lord in reference and that strikes me as though he had opportunity to talk about the

Lord with these sons -in -law, to talk about them with his neighbors. Perhaps not purely, not consistently, certainly not vehemently, but he doesn't have to introduce a new concept to them of the one

Lord who stands over against them in judgment. And that's just another way of saying we cannot simply dismiss 2

Peter 2. We cannot simply dismiss it. A lot of commentary in preaching is ruthless toward Lot.

There was one that I read and it was like, clearly he's never shared his faith at all. This was the first time he ever said anything with the

Lord. It's like, where are you getting that? I don't read that at all. But what

I do read is that perhaps he's never quite emphasized the righteous judgment of God against sin.

Of course, given Lot's life and his choices, he himself wouldn't be the type to really dwell on the righteous judgment of God against sin.

It's as though they've heard about the Lord from Lot, but on the other hand, they've never heard about the righteous judgment of the

Lord from Lot and therefore they think he's joking. We know you serve this

Lord. We have other forms of devotion here in Sodom. We know that this is important to you,

Lot, but what are you talking about? The Lord's gonna destroy the city? And they think he's joking. This is a tragic response to a warning about coming devastation.

And this plays out time and time again in every Sodomite society throughout the history of the world.

Those who are warned about the righteous judgment of God, either think we're joking or they turn us into a joke.

But eventually, the guy wearing the repent sandwich board is vindicated.

He turns out to be right. And that's a tragic day in the life of that society.

The sun has yet to rise on Sodom and in these twilight hours, Lot is rushing back and forth, perhaps with the greatest missionary labor that Sodom had ever seen.

They've never seen someone so earnest to save people from coming destruction. He runs to the doors of his sons -in -law and they laugh in his face.

They go back to bed. You old fool. We don't believe that nonsense.

Lot probably had never been so stark, probably had never been so urgent. Why was he giving his daughters over to these men in the first place?

But now he's taken with the reality of the Lord. Now his eyes have been opened to see the coming of a righteous judgment.

And now all of this begins to burden him like this tremendous regret. You can imagine now and then how much more so when he's dwelling in the caves by Zohar, the guilt, the regret of the wasted years, the wasted decades that he never warned them, that he never influenced them, that he never sought to change their ways and pull them, reel them away from God's destruction.

But even then, as readers of the Scripture, we might wonder, even if Lot had warned them year after year and day after day, like Noah's building the ark warned the people of the ancient world, year after year, day after day of a coming righteous judgment of God, would it have made any difference whatsoever?

It's a tragic response to the warning of coming devastation. John Calvin says, they deemed his language fabulous, meaning unimaginable, fantasy.

Because where there is no religion and no fear of God, whatever is said concerning the punishment of the wicked, it vanishes as an illusory thing.

And so we see how fatal an evil security is, an evil security.

The nearer the vengeance of God approaches, the more does their obstinacy increase and become desperate.

There is nothing more full of fear and even of terror than wicked men are when the hand of God presses closely on them, but until constrained by force, they perceive their destruction to be imminent they either reject all threats with proud scorn or contemptuously pass them by.

Their sloth ought to awaken us to the fear of God. You see what he's saying? The closer the judgment comes, the more imminent, the more obvious, the more dead, the more stubborn, the more obstinate they are toward it, until it begins to break open upon their heads.

And he says that sloth ought to awaken God's people to the judgment. We began in chapter 19 with Lot sitting in the gate, perhaps capitalizing on this meticulously sought after influence and a comfortable life in a well -watered plain in a beautiful city, the most prominent city among the cities of the

Dead Sea Plain. And that meticulous influence, like a sprouting seed, as soon as he laid eyes on this lifestyle, perhaps he spent decade after decade carefully navigating, both vexing his soul at the filth of sodomite culture, but also flexing his soul to better accommodate ways to be comfortable and to become friends with this godless culture.

But when push came to shove, the men of Sodom knew, he's not one of us.

He's not one of us. So all that Lot's compromise accomplished ultimately was the destruction of all the things, the ways, and the people he had loved.

It's devastating. It's devastating. We can imagine what all those decades of worldly concerns and fleshly machinations amounted to, sitting in the caves by Zoar.

Would he have given anything to have another shot, another chance to relive his life?

If it had to be in Sodom, then to live it entirely differently. No longer will

I accommodate these ways so willingly. No longer will I become numb and paralyzed by the influence of things that are sinful.

I will not be that frog put in the water as it's brought to a boil. I will not become desensitized like some boot camp trainee to the horrors of sin and lose my own morality and lose my own soul.

That the tragedy, the guilt of a lost influence and all of this time he had spent weaning and preening his influence in Sodomite culture,

Sodomite culture had actually influenced him. Would he have given anything to have just one more opportunity to be devoted, to be resolute, to cut off the offending hand, to pluck out the offending eye, to live radically, to be called out of Babylon, to not partake of the intoxicating fornications of the whore of Babylon, to use

Revelation's language, to be a beacon to the truth of God and the will of God in the world?

Would he have given anything to dwell in a tent like Abraham dwelt in a tent?

To not have invested so much of himself and his energy and his time and his resources only to be utterly wiped off the face of the earth, to give anything to live by faith like Abraham, his uncle.

Would he give anything? How few Abrahams there are in our churches today.

How many lots we are. How many live in this present evil age just like Lot lived in Sodom.

What greater tragedy to Lot than at the very climax of his faith when he looks to his sons dead in their eyes and he says, judgment is coming, the

Lord is going to destroy this city. If you could have seen what I just saw with the men that surrounded my house and the angels who struck them and told me what they're going to do, gather your things, gather the children, gather your belongings, we have to leave this place.

Only to be left the tragedy, the guilt of that lost influence on his children and even his wife.

Would he have given anything to go back and wash his wife with the water of the world? Sever those tentacles of affection towards Sodom.

Don't go down with this city. It will take everything from us. The tragedy and guilt of a lost influence upon his children, upon his sons.

I was preaching last Sunday evening in Upton and there was a new couple I hadn't met there. I preached some months and then as a one -off as Mark Marquis returns to the pulpit last week.

And I met this couple who I hadn't seen before. They said, oh, we just moved back to Massachusetts, an older couple.

I said, oh, where from? They said, well, we were in Ohio and we had our home there, lived there for decades.

And I said, oh, well, what brings you to Massachusetts? Well, our grandchildren are here. And we realize we're getting older and we don't want to lose our influence on our children and our grandchildren.

And I just commended them for that. I said, what a godly way to think about your life and your resources and your retirement.

The tragedy, the guilt of a lost influence. All too little, all too late, only to be scoffed and rebuked and laughed at.

Does our lifestyle and the things that we put before us, the things that whether we like to admit it or not, they entertain our affections, they grab ahold of us, the things we look forward to, the things we could be said to live for, and that's evident because of how we use our time toward them and how we spend our money with them.

Do those things, whatever we are willing to admit to ourselves, does it actually train up others around us to love

God in the light of His word and the truth of His way in the world? Or are we training those around us, our spouse, our children, degree by degree, 1 ,000th by 1 ,000th to scoff at the way and the will of God?

All around us, we see this tragedy unfolding in Christian homes, don't we? And we know that God is sovereign.

We know that there's no godly form of child rearing that will naturally, by the flesh, bring a child into the kingdom of God.

We know that God is sovereign, but dare we blame

God when we've welcomed Sodom's influence into our home, when we've force -fed, like geese being made into foie gras, we've force -fed

Sodomite ways into our children's affections. Brothers and sisters, parents, one of the greatest sorrows of our lives that we will carry with us to our graves, the deepest sorrow of our hearts must be that in many ways, if it is because of our compromise, we've lost our godly influence and pushed our children towards Sodom.

When Lot chose to dwell near Sodom, he made a poor decision, and then he spent the next 25 years of his life capitalizing on that poor decision with poor decisions made every single day.

Tiny acorns become mighty oak trees, and this is the way of sin.

Spurgeon preached, it's interesting, I was looking at Spurgeon's sermons based on Genesis, and there's several chapters that he just entirely skips, not unusual for Spurgeon, and then several verses that he jumps on, and maybe he preaches twice.

He preached like six sermons out of Genesis 19, because he saw how needed and how urgent and how relevant it was to compel souls either to come into the kingdom or if in the kingdom to live a holy and sanctified life, a life of urgency.

And he explained, he had a whole sermon on Zoar, which we'll see later on.

Zoar is a city, it's called Zoar because Zoar means small or little. Isn't it a little city? It's Zoar, it's a little city.

He has a whole sermon about Zoar's sins. Isn't it little? Isn't it harmless? And he says, consider the little fly.

The little fly seems so harmless a thing. Annoying, but as long as it's not directly in front of you, you kind of put up with it, but how devastating was the plague of flies upon Egypt?

And that one fly, that one sin, it will always multiply, and it may seem harmless at first, but soon you will be overwhelmed at the devastation.

That is, if anything, the story of Lot in Sodom. What foolish young men spurn the warning of Lot.

What foolish young men and women spurn the warning of well -intended, prayerful

Christians in their lives. It is a great mercy, if you are an unbeliever, it is a great mercy to you from God that you have someone in your life praying for you and warning you about the outcome of your ways, the inevitable destruction, and you stand in the place of the scoffer.

You stand in the place, even if you're very polite and respectful, and well, we'll just see, you know, I haven't really committed yet,

I haven't figured it out. You are no different than these sons -in -laws laughing at the face of warning. It is a great mercy of God to be sought after and pursued by Christians, to be influenced, however imperfectly, to be influenced and urged on to the things of the

Lord. And believers, brothers and sisters, it's a great mercy for us to be those people, to be the pursuers, to be the prayers.

It's good for us to be an extension of God's mercy in warning people of the judgment to come and urging them to seek salvation while it is near.

But the tragedy begins to stumble forward even further. Secondly, we see Lot himself lingering.

The son's scoffing, and now Lot himself lingers. Look at verse 15. When the morning dawned, the angels urged

Lot to hurry, saying, arise, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be consumed in the punishment of the city.

They're holding that out as a real possibility, at least here in verse 15. It's a good way to provoke, isn't it?

Arise, hurry, don't settle back down. Don't spend too much time raiding the cabinet, trying to pack your backpack.

Arise, get out of this place, lest you be consumed in it. Lot had just been urging his laughing sons -in -law, and now the angels are urging him.

Such is the idleness of our flesh, Calvin says. We coldly set ourselves to escape the judgment of God, unless we're deeply stirred by the dread of it.

Deeply stirred by the dread of it. And so we read in verse 16 that he seemed to have lost his sense of alarm.

While he lingered, the men took hold of his hand, his wife's hand, and the hands of his two daughters, the

Lord being merciful to him. And they brought him, better translation may be, dragged him out of the city.

Lot lingered. We can see the lingering of the sons.

We can see the predictable unbelief of the sodomites. We ought to be shocked at the lingering of Lot and the fact that he has to be dragged out of Sodom.

As one put it, never before has anyone ever tried so hard to not be saved.

We almost want to walk up to him. If we could jump into the text, we want to grab him by his shoulders and say, what are you thinking?

What's wrong with you? But naturally, we can put ourselves there.

You know what it's like just to pack for a week vacation. How confusing and disorienting and exhausting that is.

What do I need? And this isn't a week vacation. This is the rest of your life. What can

I take with me? I guess I don't need the coin collection, but I need some food. How are we gonna have enough water? Can I take pack animals with me?

He must have been just losing his mind. And every time another thought comes, well, what about this, what about that? And he's getting distracted.

And the angels are there going, hurry up, arise. You're gonna be consumed in the city. You can almost sympathize with Lot, can't you?

He was utterly overwhelmed with the reality of what was unfolding now as the dawn rays begin to pierce the darkness.

And as that shock and that numbness sets in, he must have been totally confused about what to do. He must have felt paralyzed.

What can I do? I don't know, what can I take with me? Absolutely no time to prepare at all.

Maybe he thought he could stall. Let me just pack up a few more things, and he's hoping maybe his sons will finally come to his house.

What was that all about, Lot? Are you serious? Maybe we will come with you after all. Maybe he's stalling out of some hope for others.

Now, I agree, I agree that Lot had given over to compromise in a thousand small ways.

But again, it strikes me that many preachers and commentators have an unrealistic, almost inhumane way of treating

Lot. So I read this week things like this. Lot was so attached to this present world and the things that he could not, and the things that he had, he could just not bear the thought of leaving it.

So that's why he's lingering. Oh, I just love this place too much. I don't want to leave. Or again, too much of Lot's heart was in Sodom.

I agree with that. So he did not have any urgency to leave the city. A lack of urgency to obey

God is a common sign of a backslidden condition. What Lot are we talking about here?

His whole world was turned upside down in the middle of the night. He's spent, his sons are laughing in his face.

He's completely defeated. He has to pack up anything and everything he can carry with him out of the city while two angels are telling him, you might be destroyed in this city if you don't hurry.

Cut the guy a break. This is not a picture of backsliding unbelief.

It's just a picture of a man whose whole world is collapsing all around him.

Consider what has just happened. I wonder if these teachers and preachers would respond any differently, any better than Lot if the same event were to happen to them in the middle of the night.

So compromise aside, Lot's whole life was in Sodom, more or less.

And now he had to run away and watch everything, everything vanish in judgment.

Perhaps the best picture we have of this over the past week are those horrific videos of the

Afghan civilians running with what they can carry to the

Kabul airport, laying hold of landing gear or some panel of a plane, which if you even just stop to think about it is no real plan for safety, but they're so desperate to flee.

They're willing to go in the landing gear compartment. They're willing to try to hang by their fingernails onto a panel at 500 miles an hour cruising altitude.

It's desperate. It's not rational. It's desperate. And you see these people, they have their whole lives in their hands.

Sometimes their whole life now is in a bag. Everything they knew, everything they built, everything they had nostalgia toward, all of that now they have to leave behind.

So the first thing I wanna do is be sympathetic to Lot in his lingering, but at the same time, the scriptures do not record it for us to be sympathetic toward it.

They record it as an example of folly. And so while in a humane way, we have sympathy toward Lot, it's here in scripture because we're meant to say, how insane can one's affections be for this world?

That even when judgment is breathing down their neck, they linger. For the angels,

Lot must have seemed insane. Did you not hear why we came?

We're being patient with you. We're giving you some time to get out of the city. We're gonna get to verse 22. It seems like they're more than willing to destroy

Lot, but they've been supernaturally prevented from doing so. Their patience is up to here with this guy.

We submit to God, we do not understand why he's willing to save you. It must have seemed insane that they had to literally drag this man and his wife and his two girls out of the city.

Two men, angels appearing in the form of men, four hands, each hand grabbing a hand of these four members of the family.

As Spurgeon says, there's not a hand to spare. Lot would have lingered indefinitely.

He's so numb, so confused, so distraught, they just have to carry him out. And Calvin says, it's often necessary for us to be drawn away forcibly from those things we don't willingly leave.

And this ties in with why we read Psalm 107 at the beginning of the service. And Tony's very astute, because he picked up on it.

If riches or honors or any of the things become an obstacle to anyone, to render us numb and disengaged to the service of God, the

Lord lays hold of his hand, pulls those things away, because his words and exhortations have not been profitable.

Do you see what Calvin's saying there? The Lord brings us low that we might be spared.

When those riches, those ambitions, those things that we're clinging to that cause us to linger become an obstacle and we're no longer hearing

God's warning. We're no longer, as it were, hearing the angel saying, you're gonna be consumed in this city, God's judgment is coming, and we're going, yes, but all that I've worked for, all that I've built, yes, but my wealth and my work and my, yes, but all of this lingering, what does

God do to literally take us by the hand and pull us away from that judgment? He brings affliction.

He brings trial. He brings poverty. And that's the only way to be pulled away from that course of destruction.

And so this is how, in many ways, as Tony stole the thunder of, blessed are the poor in spirit.

Theirs is the kingdom of God. It's the poverty of spirit. It's the poverty of affliction.

It's the meekness and humility. It's how God has brought us low that actually strips away our lingering.

It actually severs those ties that would otherwise bind us to a certain destruction.

And so it's a mercy of God that he afflicts his people. And Lot shows us therein that it's possible to be saved, possible to find

God's salvation, even when we have a life filled with regretful waste.

If we didn't have that picture in Lot, the supreme picture of it is, of course, the thief on the cross, isn't it?

Have you lived a life filled with regret? Do you have one redeeming quality about you?

No, I'm justly deserving to be crucified, but not you. And so we find that because it's based on God's mercy and not on human effort, not on human ability, not on human ambition, not on human works, therefore

God can dispense mercy even to those who foolishly waste, influence, foolishly waste resources.

Alexander White said, "'Abraham is the father of all who believe, "'Lot is the father of all who are scarcely saved.'"

In 1 Corinthians 3, though, I think in 1 Corinthians 3, the imagery is talking about the church and the ministry within the church.

It certainly has this application for individuals. If anyone's work which he has built on this foundation, which no one else can lay, right?

This is Paul as an apostle talking about the founding of the church in Corinth, the foundation which is

Christ Jesus. And so the work here doesn't seem to be an individual Christian's work, but the work of the ministry, in other words, those who have gone in and taught and exercised authority in Paul's wake.

If anyone's work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned, he will suffer loss, but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.

That's a very Lot -like image for us. He himself will be saved, but he loses everything in the midst of that.

He's scarcely saved. All of that work burnt up in Sodom. And so Lot had become worldly wise, and therefore, a fool, right?

That's 1 Corinthians 3, a few verses later. Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you seems to be wise in this age, let him become a fool, that he might become wise.

For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. There's a lot of people in Corinth that were wise according to the age, and they were clamoring after more worldly wisdom.

And Paul says, you'll only be scarcely saved if you become a fool. And if you're scarcely saved, everything that that wisdom brought you, that that worldly approach brought you, all of it's burnt up, and you suffer loss.

You suffer loss. You're saved, yet as through fire.

And Lot was saved, yet as through fire.

And so the question that stands before us is, are you living in that kind of delusion? Are you living in worldly wisdom?

Are there things that will be taken from you and burnt up? Are there things that are causing you to linger, in other words?

Or are you living with the hope of glory? Are you living as a vapor? Are you living with the recognition that all flesh is as grass?

Are you living with that Psalm 90 mentality? And you're oriented toward the Lord, and toward that hope of glory, and the fact that this world is passing away?

Is that orienting your life, or are you lingering, gambling with your soul, hoping just to be saved as through fire?

There was a famous preacher, I'm sure many of you have heard of him, Haddon Robinson, who passed away a few years ago.

And I was watching a recording, it was one of the last recorded sessions of one of the last courses that Haddon Robinson taught.

And it was shortly before he died. He had a number of health issues. And in this class, the very last thing he said as he was leaving, he read from 2

Timothy 4, seven and eight, I fought the good fight. Picture him, he's old, and suffering with all sorts of bodily issues.

I fought the good fight. I finished the race. I've kept the faith. Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the

Lord, the righteous judge, will give to me on that day. And not to me only, but also to all who have loved his appearing.

And he said, you know, as a young man, what was popular in the pulpit and popular on the radio stations was this fixation on the second coming.

If there was gonna be biblical teaching, it was gonna be about the second coming, the timing of it, how things were lining up toward it.

And he says, even as a young man, I had no interest in that. If I'm being frank, I wasn't ready for Jesus to come back.

So I didn't really wanna focus on that. I had a life. I was a young man. There was a lot I hadn't experienced. And there was a lot

I was looking forward to experiencing as a young man. And so I was happy for Jesus to come later.

But he says, I have to tell you, as I've lived this life and as my body's worn down and as it's very apparent that I'll soon be meeting with this

Lord unless he returns first, I can tell you that these words have never meant more to me than they mean to me now.

Blessed are the poor in spirit. Theirs is the kingdom of God. Well, we look at verse 17 and we see this, if anything, a redemptive glimpse of Lot.

Keep in mind, all within the frame of a night, the men of Sodom have surrounded the house.

As far as Lot is concerned, become the means warranting these angels to destroy the city, have not only threatened to bring dishonor, shame, and destruction upon his house, but have actually even threatened him personally.

We're gonna do worse to you than we had planned to do with these men. In other words, we're not just going to rape you. We're going to kill you. We're gonna murder you,

Lot. And as Lot is being dragged from this wicked city, hours later, what do we find him doing in verse 17?

It came to pass when they, again, better translation, dragged them outside, that he said, this is

Lot, escape for your life. Do not look behind you, nor stay anywhere in the plain.

Escape to the mountains, lest you be destroyed. I don't think

Lot is ever more Christ -like than that. He's crying out for the men who threatened to kill him and his family and his guests, who meant to exercise their depraved will upon him and bring shame and depravity to him.

And he's crying out for them to be saved. Flee to the mountains. Don't look back. Flee to the mountains.

Lot is pleading for his neighbors to flee the wrath of God. Richard Baxter said when, well, first of all,

I should say this. We live in a time when the judgment of God is rarely preached.

How often should one preach on the judgment of God? The answer is, whenever it's in the text.

So here we are in Genesis 19, and we have to preach on the judgment of God. I personally think that mercy is far more displayed throughout

Genesis than judgment, and yet mercy is nothing apart from judgment. How can you understand what mercy is unless you understand what judgment is?

And so even while we see this unfolding grace in the identity and character of God all pointing us toward our needed hope for a

Messiah, we see this whole sub -narrative of the increasing spread of sin in the curse of man upon the earth.

But we live in a time when everyone's happy to preach about the mercy of God and happy to not preach about the judgment of God.

And then to counter that, there's a handful of preachers that are happy to preach the judgment of God and nothing but the judgment of God, and the judgment of God as though they're the angry judge looking to exercise wrath.

And few of them have the spirit that Lot has here. Few of them have the spirit that Jesus said his disciples ought to have.

When we're willing to call down fire, he rebukes them. And so as Richard Baxter said, the great minister in Kidderminster, preachers ought to preach on judgment with tears in their throat.

Meaning in other words, you have not actually reconciled with the reality of how devastating judgment is, and how merciful

God is, and how he does not delight in the overthrow of the wicked unless you're coldly, clinically preaching

God's judgment with tears in your throat, out of a concern for the lost, out of a fear of the devastation that he reaps upon the earth.

Our modern feeling is that we should not offend people with talk of destruction or devastation or hell, but that's not how the apostles preached.

That's not how Jesus himself preached. We like to have semi palatable kinds of talking about and sharing about the love of God, but it is the

Lord Jesus himself who gives us these descriptions of an unquenchable fire or a bottomless pit reserved for those who reject him.

So we have to hold these things together. What strikes me about Lot in this moment is that as one who's received mercy, he is still willing to show that mercy toward others.

And so if there's any verse that's redemptive for the character of Lot as a righteous man with a righteous soul,

I'd have to say it's verse 17. He's been a failure in almost every category of his life. And when he gets to the caves of Zoar, just like Noah, he'll be a failure there.

But when he receives mercy out of sure judgment, that mercy, he begins to mirror, he begins to overflow.

And so it ought to be for every true believer. If we have really received mercy over against a sure judgment due for our sin, how merciful should we be, brothers and sisters?

Mercy, as James says, mercy triumphs in judgment. Third, we see

Lot's intercession. And now so much for that beautiful glimpse of Lot's righteous character.

Now he goes back to a sniveling worldling. Lot said to them, please know my lords. Indeed now your servant has found favor in your sight and you've increased your mercy, which you've shown me by saving my life.

But I cannot escape to the mountains lest some evil overtake me and I die. That's what's gonna happen here,

Lot. That's what's gonna happen here. See now, this city is near enough to flee to, and it's a little one.

Please let me escape there. Isn't it a little one? My soul shall live. His soul shall live decade by decade, just like he lived in Sodom, you see?

He still has not connected the dots. He still has not learned the lesson from God's judgment. But even so, even in this further foolish decision,

God relents to show mercy to Lot. See, I have favored you concerning this thing also.

I will not overthrow the city for which you've spoken. Hurry, escape there, for I cannot do anything until you arrive there.

Therefore, the name of the city was called Zor. So Lot, in trying to save his own skin and make his life a little more comfortable, ends up unwittingly sparing the small little city of Zor.

He ends up, unbeknowing to him, interceding for the little city of Zor. And again, we have this principle retained, that the righteous are the preservation, the salt of the city.

And it's for the sake of the righteous that God withholds his judgment. Again, we have that illustrated for us here.

But look at Lot's whimpering speech. He's being dragged out of the city by the angels because he was lingering.

And the thought of having to go in the wilderness is too much for him. I need to be back in a city.

I need to have the comforts of a city. It's not enough just to survive and then, okay, I'm gonna trust the God who saved me and trust that you'll provide for me day by day.

In fact, I might go this way back to Abraham and kind of dwell with him and maybe start to adopt his lifestyle.

No, he goes right back to the very way he had been when he first chose Sodom as his dwelling place.

And what's the inevitable outcome of that? But notice that what's highlighted here is

God's grace. He still relents to show mercy even to this foolish decision.

Just for the sake of sparing Lot, he allows him to go to the city. And as we see, the fear of God has done something, as we'll see next week, in that he can't dwell in that city for long.

He's too afraid to. Tells us something about the character of that city too, doesn't it? So you picture now that the sun has dawned.

All of this commotion, all of this distress, all of this chaos has unfolded and now the sun has risen and it's a day, so it seems just like any other day, a morning just like any other morning.

Sodomites are being woken up by their roosters, going down, putting in the pop tarts, getting ready for the day, shaving with the electric shaver, getting ready for the day.

It's a morning just like any other morning. Verse 23, the sun had risen upon the earth.

Lot finally arrives to Zohar and then the Lord rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah from the

Lord out of the heavens. Notice that repetition. The Lord rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah from the

Lord out of the heavens. There's no mistake here. This is not the natural disaster that happens.

This is not the tower of Solomon. This is a divine judgment from the Lord out of the heavens and he overthrew the cities.

You see that imagery? It's like an army overthrowing their enemy and that's the picture of sin throughout

Genesis. There's this wickedness that rises up in defiance and rebellion against God. It's creating this plague and victims in its wake and it's corrupting the earth and God as a warrior is overthrowing it.

We saw that in Genesis after the flood, how like a warrior he hung his bow in the sky. He had successfully overthrown his enemies.

The people of Sodom and Gomorrah are utterly wiped off the face of the earth. I personally don't think that the

Dead Sea was there prior to this. I think those cities were what now is the

Dead Sea. There's all sorts of archeological work and research over where the cities of the plain could have been situated and most of them concur.

It must actually be within the seabed of the Dead Sea. It had been a well -watered plain and now it's dead.

So salty, so sulfuric, it cannot sustain life to this day and the people of Sodom and Gomorrah saw more power and more mercy and more grace than any of the other cities or peoples of that time.

That's very striking, isn't it? No people group at that time had seen more of God's mercy and grace than Sodom and Gomorrah.

They had been delivered by Abraham and therefore had the testimony of Abraham's God. They had

Abraham's relative living in their midst as a righteous man preserving them, being a testimony to the

God of Abraham and to his ways. He was a righteous man, vexing his soul daily over their wickedness.

No other city had a lot. No other city had that kind of access to Abrahamic intercession.

And before that destruction, it was one of the most beautiful areas in the face of the world.

We read in Genesis 13 that it was like the Garden of the Lord. Sodom and Gomorrah was like Eden and just like Eden, sin devastated it.

Now not thorns and thistles, but sulfur and brimstone salt. All of this great privilege, all of this great beauty had been turned completely upside down.

Ray Steadman, he says, "'Go and stand by the shores of the Dead Sea today. "'Look out over that lifeless, brackish wastewater, "'the lowest and most desolate place "'on the face of the earth, 1300 feet below sea level, "'and listen to the lifeless waves lap on the beach "'in unending monotonous tones of death "'with nothing growing there, nothing living there, "'nothing moving in that God -forsaken place.'"

It's a picture of judgment. You know the sounds of the city.

If you've been into the city and those sounds, very different from where we live, isn't it? Not the whirring of crickets and the occasional airplane, but the hustle and bustle of life.

Schoolchildren playing and cars moving around and just the busyness of people moving.

It became utterly silent. God wiped that all away. Luther, commenting on Genesis 19, he said he could not read this chapter without feeling a deep revulsion.

He says, it goes right through me. Es ganzes mir et, right through my heart.

Because what prevents any society from having this outcome under the mighty hand of God?

But sheer undeserved mercy. The righteous who are like salt within her.

And that's why you read Psalm 107, he turns rivers into a wilderness, water springs into dry ground, a fruitful land into barrenness for the wickedness of those who dwell in it.

This is what God does. This is not something he did. This is something he does.

You find the same similar language in the blessing and cursing motifs of the Mosaic Covenant. Remember that it's

Moses who's writing this account and it's Moses who's writing of the covenant renewal at Moab in Deuteronomy 29.

He's writing to a generation of Israelites who have been delivered from the exodus of Egypt and have been given

God's law. And he's saying there's blessing and there's bounty and you're going to a well -watered garden of the

Lord. You're going to a land flowing with milk and honey. But this law is meant to bind you. This law will be your way of life.

And then the curse has come and the curse is given in verse 18 of Deuteronomy 29.

So there may not be among you a man or a woman, a family or a tribe whose heart turns away today from the

Lord our God to go and serve the gods of these nations. That there may not be among you a root bearing bitterness.

And so it may not happen when that one hears the words of this curse that he blesses himself in his heart saying,

I shall have peace even though I follow the dictates of my own heart. By the way, you never get a biblical theology of following your own heart.

If you understand what the heart is, according to Jeremiah 17, nine, it's not a good thing to follow your heart if you're a

Christian. It's a bad thing. I just know in my heart, this is right for me. The Lord would not spare that one for then the anger of the

Lord and his jealousy would burn against that man. And every curse that is written in this book would settle on him. The Lord will blot his name out under heaven and the

Lord would separate him from all the tribes of Israel for adversity according to the curses of this covenant written in this book of the law.

So that the coming generation of your children who rise up after you and the foreigner who comes afar from the land would say when they see the plagues of that land and the sickness which the

Lord has laid in it, the whole land is brimstone salt burning. It is not sown. It does not bear.

No grass grows there. Like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah which the

Lord overthrew in his anger and his wrath. You see, God allows there to be a

Sodom and a Gomorrah as a testimony, as a restraint of the evil of the peoples that witness it.

Sodom becomes then an emblem of God's righteous judgment upon the earth. His desire that others not experience or undergo that same judgment.

In verse 26, where we'll close today, verse 26 takes us to the last emblem, the last image of judgment.

Verse 26, his wife looked back behind him and she became a pillar of salt.

Lot's wife looked back. This wasn't a glance.

This wasn't an accident. This wasn't a little peek out of curiosity. This was something intent. The Hebrew is very specific here.

It's not saw as just some nondescript seeing. It's an intent gazing.

It's a staring. There's a longing, yearning kind of look towards Sodom.

And we realize that this wasn't just in the moment. This wasn't just as soon as they leave the shadow and she turns around and becomes, it's after this long journey when they finally arrived towards Zoar.

Finally arrived to the place that Lot said, please let us dwell here. Please secure us here.

So she's literally on the doorstep of salvation. She's literally on the brink of safety when she turns around and begins to intently gaze and yearn, maybe even turn toward Sodom.

And so what is this a picture of? It's tragic, isn't it?

She dies within steps of safety. They've virtually arrived at the city of refuge.

And we get this picture that while Lot and the daughters have hurried on, what's done is done and there's no going back.

She's lingering now, just like Lot had lingered. She's lingering behind. And so that judgment actually reaches her.

She's not where Lot is. She's not keeping in step. Her heart, just like Lot's heart was in Sodom, she lingered behind just like he lingered behind.

But she looked back, she turned back and that destruction came to her, steps from safety.

You know, John Bunyan's great book, Pilgrim's Progress, when

Christian first leaves the city of destruction, there's two men that follow.

Two that follow and their names are Obstinate and Pliable.

And so you get the picture that Bunyan is trying to paint, obstinate, stubborn, refusing to submit, refusing to go, obstinate.

But then pliable, I'll go with you a little while. I'm interested, I'll see. Maybe this is true, maybe it's not.

Maybe this is the best thing for me, maybe it's not. Pliable, both obstinate and pliable end up returning to the city of destruction.

And I think it's Bunyan's way of saying it doesn't matter if you reject outright the claim of Christ, if you reject the testimony of the gospel, or if you go with it a ways, and really, really a ways.

In fact, all the way to the city of Zoar. If you end up turning back to the city of destruction, it does not matter how far you traveled, how far you came, how much you learned, what you exhibited, and what changed in your life along the way.

If you turn back, you're just as good as obstinate. You have the same fate as obstinate. You have the same fate as Sodom.

It doesn't matter how far along you've gone and how much has changed as a result of that. If in the end you're not resolute, persevering unto the celestial city, your fate will be the same.

And you have a picture of that in Lot's wife, don't you? Which is why not just Bunyan, but Jesus himself calls us to remember

Lot's wife. He says, remember Lot's wife. Remember Lot's wife. This is in Luke chapter 17.

To give some context for it, I realize the time is running, but I feel that this is very important to give.

Luke 17, beginning in verse 20, for context. Now, he was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come.

Remember, according to the beginning of Mark's gospel, Jesus came preaching the gospel of the kingdom. He answered them and said, the kingdom of God does not come with observation, nor will they say, see here, see there.

Indeed, the kingdom of God is in your midst. New king within you, I think in your midst is better.

We have here, I think the first glimpse of what we've referred to in the past, I think back in Mark 13, inaugurated eschatology, the coming of the kingdom, as something both now and not yet.

There's something imminent and something transcendent about the kingdom of God. Jesus turns his attention from that question to the implied issue.

When's the kingdom coming? And he's saying, it's in your midst. So we have this now and not yet concept, right? The eschaton means everything, the consummation and the judgment, it's all together.

That's the eschaton, that's the day of the Lord. Now Jesus turns, verse 22, his attention to the disciples.

So that the Pharisee poses the question, implies the kingdom and he knows how restless his hearts, the disciples' hearts are.

Oh, the kingdom, yes, is it at this time you will restore the kingdom, Lord? When's this kingdom coming? We can't wait for the kingdom with all of our unrealistic and wrong expectations about what that kingdom is.

So he's talking to his disciples now, verse 22. Then he said to the disciples, the days will come when you will desire to see, notice, one of the days of the

Son of Man. That's really important. I'm not gonna spend any time going into it. But it's significant that he says one of the days of the

Son of Man. And you will not see it. You're looking for it, you're gonna actually see one of the days of the

Son of Man, one of the days of the Lord. You're gonna wanna see it, you will not see it. And they will say to you, look here, look there.

Do not go after them or follow them. For as the lightning that flashes out of one part under heaven shines to the other part of heaven, so also the

Son of Man will be in his day. But first, he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation.

As it was in the days of Noah, so will also be in the days of the Son of Man. They ate, they drank, they married wives.

They were given in marriage until the day that Noah entered the ark and the flood came and destroyed them all.

Likewise, as it was also in the days of Lot, they ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built.

It was a morning just like any other morning. But on the day that Lot went out of Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all.

Even so will it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed. In that day, he was on the housetop and his goods are in the house.

Let him not come down to take them away. Be urgent, hurry, get out of this place. The Lord's destroying it.

And likewise, the one who's in the field, let him not turn back. Remember Lot's wife.

Jesus is speaking to his disciples. And he doesn't say, hurry up, don't be like Lot, hurry up, just gather and get out like Lot.

He doesn't say that to his disciples. He says, remember Lot's wife. Don't think you're

Lot. Assume you're Lot's wife is what Jesus is saying. Remember Lot's wife.

Don't think, oh no, I know I'm so worldly, but good thing I'll be scarcely saved. Don't assume that.

Assume you're Lot's wife. Looking to turn back and you'll be utterly lost in judgment. Remember Lot's wife.

When that day comes, you do not wanna have a heart that's been compromised like the heart of Lot's wife was compromised.

A heart that longs and yearns and intently gazes after the things that the Lord is taking away because they've been corrupted and spoiled.

Lot's life was a friend to Sodom, a friend to the world.

And therefore she was at enmity with God. And so Jesus is saying, remember

Lot's wife. Look forward to the deliverance that the Son of Man is bringing you. Don't look back to the destruction.

Don't have your affections turned toward that. Look forward and live by hope in the coming of the Son of Man.

My disciples, remember Lot's wife. We know almost nothing about Lot's wife other than her demise.

She wasn't there to make the unleavened bread. She wasn't there turning up butter like Sarah. Her whole biblical biography is contained in this one episode.

She looked back. She became a pillar of salt. She was utterly destroyed. Her whole life in the biblical testimony is one sentence long.

She looked back. She became a pillar of salt. And then the only other mention of her in scripture is in Luke when he says, remember

Lot's wife. Remember Lot's wife. Three words in English, remember

Lot's wife. That might be the shortest reference in all of scripture. But his wife from behind him looked back and became a pillar of salt.

Remember Lot's wife. Brothers and sisters, you don't wanna be stripped of your spiritual gold and silver and precious jewels and wise craftsmanship building on the foundation of Jesus by the

Spirit's prompting and direction, sowing life unto life and reaping according to the

Spirit of God, the fruits of the Spirit. You don't wanna be reduced to some dry husk of a scarcely saved believer watching everything you've devoted your life toward be consumed, where there's no power, no glory.

You can't straddle Christianity. Remember Lot's wife. Don't bank on being scarcely saved.

If you bank on being scarcely saved, you'll never be saved. Strive to the narrow gate.

You remember Lot's wife, and then you remember Lot. Jesus goes on to say, Luke 17, 32, remember

Lot's wife? Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it. Whoever loses his life will preserve it.

There's the difference between Lot's wife and Lot. Lot was hesitant, soul gambling, lingering, but in the end, he was finally willing to lose

Sodom so that his life could be preserved. Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it.

Whoever loses his life will preserve it. Lot's wife was not willing. She was not willing to lose

Sodom. She was not willing to lose her life in Sodom. She sought to save it, salvage it, head back toward it.

In an attempting to save the life and the relationships and the affections that she had built, she lost them all, clutching and grasping at that which must pass away is a guaranteed way to face the tragic, irreversible judgment of God.

Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, and then live with an open hand toward the world.

This doesn't mean you go to a wooden cabin, you eat gray porridge every day, and you only talk to each other in King James.

We're not talking about life denying, world denying, creation denying lifestyle here, as though that's what it means to not be worldly.

It's a very hard thing to balance. On the one hand, we have to be stewards of all that God has given.

We have to enjoy the good gifts of the good giver, who graciously as an artist has filled our life and our world with beautiful, good things, good gifts, experiences to be enjoyed.

Being human in this world does not mean a denial of that or a removal from it. Being human according to God's intention means being redeemed in the midst of a redeemed world.

And so that's our great hope. We're the first fruits of it. In other words, we're new creations in Christ.

And we're the first fruits of that redemption, looking forward to the redemption of all that God has made.

That's not world denying or life denying, but at the same time, to grasp on to the hope of the nations, to strive after the promise, to lose your life in the way that Jesus means, to lose your life, means that you cannot have this affection, this ambition, this anchor in this life and all that can offer you.

Becoming idolatrous and compromised and numb, desensitized to the way of sin.

Whoever loves the things of the world does not have the love of the

Father in him. We would like to ask,

Lord, what do you have to show for your decades in Sodom? What have you gained in the way that you've lived?

You chose what seems so well watered. You chose what seemed so comfortable and so harmless.

Wouldn't you give anything to have the discomfort of a tent now? Wouldn't you give anything to live as a wandering pilgrim in Canaan rather than watch everything you ever had in Sodom go up in smoke?

All that vexation, all that strategic gain, all that influence, much like certain currents of evangelicalism today.

We wanna ask, what have you gained from being in Sodom, from cultural engagement according to Sodomite ways?

What impact have you made in the wicked city? Evangelicalism is a lot like law.

Well, we're gonna go live in the city and maybe we'll make some good impacts and all that happens is they become like Sodom.

Was it worth it? Was it worth it to open up your mouth degree by degree, decade by decade, and saturate the godless ways of secular decay?

Was it worth it? And then we turn to ourselves in the mirror.

Are we lingering? Have we been forthright? Have we had integrity and winsomeness or have we been mumbling in the city square?

Have we been holy, living a life set apart, enjoying the same gifts, but not as of us, but from the giver?

And then certain things that we deny because we deny worldly lust, we deny ungodliness.

Have we been holy or have we been corroded by worldliness? Have we been scoffed at for our godly wisdom or have we become foolish like the worldly wise men of our day?

Have we become effective in other's lives, gained an influence in our spouse, in our children, or do our words ring like some inevitable joke?

Do we linger and linger and linger in stumbling and backsliding unbelief?

Remember Lot. This is the close.

I know we're going really long. Lest you despair, lest you consider the fate of Lot's wife and consider yourself more

Lot's wife than Lot, certainly more Lot than Abraham, lest you fear that judgment is sure to come to you and grace cannot be brought to you, don't forget

Lot either. The mumbling, worldly, foolish, regretful, ineffective, lingering, stumbling, wasteful, fruitless, bramble in the salt land of Sodom is nevertheless saved by the mercy of God.

If there's ever been hope, there's hope here. In verse 22, we read,

God says in verse 22 through the angel, hurry, escape there.

I cannot do anything until you arrive there. Because God had determined to save Lot, no matter his lingering, no matter his stumbling, no matter his backsliding, his doubt, his worldliness, because God had determined to save him, he would be saved.

I cannot destroy until you are safe. And that is the testimony of every

Christian, whether you triumph like Abraham or whether you come mournfully, poor in spirit, because you're a lot like Lot and maybe something like Lot's wife.

So how can there be any hope for you? How will you escape the destruction that is coming? Because it was never about your efforts or your successes or your triumphs, it was about your faith in the son of God who gave himself for you.

It was the righteous blood that was shed, the judgment that he faced. The Sodom destruction that he endured, that is why you will be spared.

He cannot destroy you without going back on his own word of testimony. Whoever comes to him will be saved.

He is the city of refuge. He is Zion embodied, he is the temple of God. And so if you're despairing, if you're looking at your life as we all ought to this morning and say,

God, I've become numb to sin in a number of ways. I've become desensitized to the things that I expose myself to.

I've become as much of a poor influence on my children as a godly influence. Lord, I'm compromised in a hundred different directions.

Be merciful to me, help me. We start here that God has a desire of mercy for you as you come to Christ and put your hope in him.

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word.

Father, we thank you for your testimony. The testimony of your mercy in the face of a horrific judgment.

Truly mercy triumphs in judgment. Lord, that you spared lot despite lot is the song that we all sing.

Lord, you spare us despite us. You spare us not for the sake of us, but for the sake of Christ.

And so him we love and him we adore. Him we're brought low before as we mourn those ways that we've compromised and backslidden and lived in doubt and selfish unbelief.

Forgive us Lord and help us to examine our ways before you. Shed light upon us

Lord. Let us not be as those who linger. Let us not be as the foolish virgins who let their lamps run dry, but let us be wise, which is foolishness according to this world, but it is your wisdom unto salvation.

And so we pray Lord that in this room, there would be more Abrahams than lots, that there would be no lots wives in our midst

Lord, that there would be no scarcely saved to watch their lives implode when all that they lived for burns up at the end.

May you give us that precious metal, precious jewels. May you do the building. May you be the watchman.