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 ten 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 ten 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. Second Peter 2, beginning in verse 6, God, the question is, if God, and 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, so we're going to look at verses 12 -26 in four ways. First, Lot's calling, second, Lot's lingering, third, Lot's intercession, and fourth and last, Lot's wife.

Lot's Calling and the Warning of Coming Judgment

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 -13, have you anyone else here? Son-in-law, your sons, your daughters, and whomever you have in this 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 refused, 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 graze of the sun, hiding still behind the horizon, beginning to slowly turn up, that dimness that comes in the twilight hours.

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? 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 sons-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 sons-in-laws, who had married, in other words, betrothed his daughters, and he said, get up, get out of this place, the Lord will destroy the city, but to his sons-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 going to 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?

And 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 worshipped 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 chapter 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 to 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 going to destroy this 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 Zoar, 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 in 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 than 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 Revelations 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 laughed at. 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 word? 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 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 a hold 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, one thousandth by one thousandth, 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 Zohar, which we'll see later on. Zohar is a city, it's called Zohar because Zohar means small or little. Isn't it a little city? It's Zohar, it's a little city.

He has a whole sermon about Zohar 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 spurned the warning of Lot.

What foolish young men and women spurned 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, 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.

Lot's Lingering and the Mercy That Pulls Us Out

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 son-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 going to have enough water? Can I take pack animals with me? And 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 going to 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?

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 1 ,000 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 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.

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 want to 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 going to 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, that 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, it's 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, 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.

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.