God's Sovereign Saving Kindness

Well, I want to begin our time today by asking you a few questions. And the first question that I want to ask is this. Is it possible for a man or woman to make such a wreck of their lives that they are beyond God's saving ability?

Or to ask you another question, is it actually conceivable that a person, because of their own sinful dysfunction, because of their besetting sins, and because of their repeated failures, is it conceivable that such sins and such a sinner might be able to thwart the perfect purposes of Almighty God?

If ever there was a man who felt that he was capable of doing this, and I'm sure there have been a few, I think of one man, a man named John Newton. Maybe you know that name. Maybe you've seen it in a hymnal before.

He was born in the early 1700s. And John Newton, shortly after his birth, got off to an incredibly difficult start. He was just seven years old when his mother died of tuberculosis. And because his father was a shipmaster at sea, he was sent off to a boarding school until his wife or his husband, sorry, let's start this all over again, till his father could find himself a wife, that's what I'm trying to say, who would be able to parent him.

That's how it worked back then. And as John Newton lived, he remained in that boarding school until he was 11 years old. And as is often the case, when young boys lack a father and a mother, he got himself into the wrong crowd.

And when his father returned back to England, he found his son in a sorry state of affairs and sought to take him off to Jamaica, so where he could work at a sugar cane plantation and get away from the bad influences that were in England.

But John had other plans. And so instead of going with his father, he boarded a merchant ship that was headed towards the Mediterranean, and there set sail for the open seas, somewhat in the footsteps of his father.

And reflecting on his own life years later, John Newton would say this about himself at that time. He said, I learned there to curse and to blaspheme. I was exceedingly wicked and all of this before I was 12 years old.

And from there, John Newton went further down this same trajectory, so that by the time he was 18, he joined the Royal Navy. It was somewhat involuntary, his joining of the Royal Navy. And because of that, at some point, he tried to abandon ship.

He got off the ship, but his captain found him, and they bound him to the center of the ship by his waist and publicly flogged him before all of the other sailors. And this was such an embarrassment to Newton.

He was so incensed by it that he planned a murder-suicide where he was going to kill the captain of the ship in cold blood and then take his own life. But because John Newton was such a nuisance to the captain and to his fellow sailors, they eventually simply passed him over to a slave ship that was on its way to South Africa.

And there on that slave ship bound for South Africa, he went no longer as a sailor, no longer as a Navy officer, but as a slave. And we don't normally hear of it this way, but he went there to West Africa, where he served as a white slave for a West African princess.

And there he served. And he knew that the life of a slave was hard. And so the next thing to happen was even more remarkable, that there, serving as a slave, another, I think it was an English captain, found him, rescued him, and delivered him back into the open seas.

And what did John Newton do, knowing that the life of a slave was hard and cruel and unjust? John Newton got his own ship and began selling slaves himself and took on the life of a slave ship captain, where he served for nine years.

And even though John Newton at that point was at least somewhat acquainted with the ways of Christianity, and that might have influenced his efforts, his ethics in some ways, he was, by all measures, a fallen man.

He took great pride in the fact that he would keep his ship clean. And keeping his ship clean meant cleaning it with vinegar between sailing trips. And he took four different trips where he transported at least 1 ,500 slaves from their homes, from their families, from the life that they knew to a distant world where they would serve, where they would be treated like livestock, bought and sold at will, and where many of them would perish.

John Newton was, if there ever was a man who brought his own life into a ruinous estate, it was John Newton. And before John reached his 30th birthday, eventually there was going to be consequences from his sinful lifestyle.

And so because of this brutal lifestyle at sea, he ended up suffering a life-altering stroke followed by a bout of seizures. Now, I don't know many 29-year-old men who have strokes, but here John Newton was one of those such men.

And so at the age of 29, he returned to England, having spent nearly 20 years of his young life aboard a ship cursing, blaspheming, drinking, gambling, and sinking his life into ruin. And if many modern onlookers would look at him in this way, certainly the onlookers of his day did.

Looking at Newton's life, they would have said something like this. What a tragedy that this man could have made something of himself, but alas, he threw it all away. And so as a 29-year-old coming back to England, he came back immoral, infirmed, and some would say, and I think he struggled with this at times, worthy of simply taking his life.

He made a complete disaster of his life, and he wasn't even yet 30 years of age. But something remarkable happened. In fact, a couple things happened after Newton returned. The first thing that John Newton had to deal with was this.

He had to deal with the permanent consequences of his own sin, that because of that hard life at sea, he lived the rest of his life of long-term health issues. That included blindness as he got older, and some would even say early stages of dementia, though it wasn't called that at that time.

And he lived for the rest of his life with a profound sense of shame. He wrote years later, he said, it will always be a subject of humiliating reflection to me that I was once an active instrument in a business at which my heart now shudders.

And so this grief never left John Newton. But something else resulted from John Newton's ruinous life. After he returned home, he went to the next best thing that he knew, which was working at the port of a slave trading, I should say the port of the slave trading business in Liverpool.

And there he worked as a tide surveyor, measuring the heights of the tide. And while he was working there at Liverpool, a man came through Liverpool preaching in the open air, the famous open air preacher, George Whitefield.

And if there's any question whether John Newton was converted or not up to that point, after he met with George Whitefield, after he heard the gospel, there was no question. His life was radically transformed.

He went from being a sick or sin sick slave trader to a faithful pastor, a hymn writer, and an abolitionist who sought to do away with the slave trade. And the Lord in his great kindness did something for John Newton.

He was able to live another 52 years in the world. 82 years of age is when he died, which is rather old for that time. And for those 52 years, he made his life count. He sought to advance the evangelical revival that had started during his time at sea.

He became a faithful pastor who was a prolific letter writer. And if you've never read anything from John Newton, read his letters. It's a masterclass in warm, rich pastoral writing. He went on to write one of the world's most popular hymns.

Does anyone know it? Amazing Grace, which was an autobiographical hymn of some kind that spoke of the Lord, saving him out of his wretched spiritual blindness and giving him new life in Christ. And then until the final year of his life, he labored to see slavery abolished.

Eventually it was finally outlawed just nine months before he died. And you'd see something of John Newton's resolve later in the later years of his life, when at one point a man looked at him and said, you know, you've lost your vision.

You're losing your mind. I think you should just stop preaching. And he encouraged him to retire from preaching. And Newton simply replied, he said, I cannot stop. What an old African blasphemer, stop while he can still speak.

He knew what the Lord had saved him from. And so he was gonna live his life to that end. And so he preached until he was 81 years old, just a year before he died. And so what we find, it's a long introduction, but what we find in John Newton's life is a superb example of God's ability, his sovereign ability to fulfill his purposes, either through men or altogether in spite of men who seek to shipwreck God's plans by their own lives.

God's Sovereign Saving Kindness in Genesis 19–20

And today we're gonna see another such example of that in our study in Genesis chapter 19 and chapter 20. Last week, as I've already mentioned, we heard our brother speak about the horrific and yet fully justified, justifiable destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

And in those first 29 verses of chapter 19, we looked at what is perhaps one of the darkest narratives in all of scripture. And yet in the words of one commentator, the scandal of Sodom was only half of the story.

And we'll see the other half of that story today. Today we get the other half, where we look not only at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, but now the gut-wrenching account of the absolute fallenness of the human heart in the story of Lot and his daughters.

And then again, the folly of Abraham as he tries to make his way back in the direction of Egypt. And what we're going to see is this in our study of Genesis 19 and 20 today, is that despite the folly of the human heart, despite every effort by men to derail God's plans, we learn in this passage that God's redemptive purposes will always prevail.

And the real emphasis of this passage is not simply the rock-bottom sinfulness of the human heart. It's not just God's flawless and complete justice, but it's God's sovereign and saving kindness towards sinners, that God is sovereign.

He wields that sovereignty in his justice, and he wields that sovereignty in his mercy. And we will see both today. So as we look at Genesis 19, we're gonna begin, we'll break it up into three different sections, and we'll begin by looking at verses 30 through 38.

So Genesis 19, 30 through 38. I'll go ahead and read them, and then we'll provide some commentary on it. So this is what we read. This is God's word for us today. Now Lot went up out of Zoar and lived in the hills with his two daughters, for he was afraid to live in Zoar.

So he lived in a cave with his two daughters. And the firstborn said to the younger, our father is old, and there is not a man on earth to come into us after the manner of all the earth. Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie down with him that we may preserve offspring from our father.

So they made their father drink wine that night, and the firstborn went in and lay with her father. He did not know when she lay down or when she arose. The next day, the firstborn said to the younger, behold, I lay last night with my father.

Let us make him drink wine tonight also. Then you go in and lie with him that we may preserve offspring from our father. So they made their father drink wine that night also, and the younger arose and lay with him.

And he did not know when she lay down or when she arose. Thus, both the daughters of Lot became pregnant by their father. The firstborn bore a son and called his name Moab. He is the father of the Moabites to this day.

The younger also bore a son and called his name Ben-Ami. He is the father of the Ammonites to this day. Now, I think that most of us here have probably read this account before, but I think that there are a few of us who have not.

And this text should come to us with a sense of shock and awe at just how debased this passage is, just how debased these actions are. This is what we find in Genesis 19. We come upon the tragic ending of the conclusion or the tragic ending of the scene of the destruction of Genesis 19.

In verse 30, we find Lot and his daughters in a desperate situation. And I wanna take us back in time a little bit so that we can begin to grasp just how far Lot and his family have fallen since even Genesis chapter 13.

It was not all that long ago. If we look back at Genesis 13, verse five, you can go there if you'd like with me, that we see that Lot was greatly blessed as a result of his close proximity with his uncle Abraham.

In 13 .5, we read this, and Lot who went with Abraham also had flocks and herds and tents. And we read that the number or the greatness of his possessions was such that the land could not support both Abraham and his nephew simultaneously.

And so when the option came for Lot to separate from Abraham, what did he do? But he chose the most fertile region that he could. In some ways, it mirrors the very thing that we see in the garden when Adam and Eve looked upon the fruit and it was a delight to the eyes and they desired to see it.

Lot looks upon the valley. It's pleasant in his sight, at least for business. And so he goes and he makes his home in the valley that was the home of Sodom and Gomorrah. And over the chapters, as we have made our way through Genesis, we have seen this for ourselves, the slow progression, or we could say the regression of Lot's life as he lived in that valley.

In Genesis chapter 13 and verse 12, if we look a few verses on, we see that when Lot first departed from Abraham, he moved his tent, and this is how the text reads, as far as Sodom, meaning that he did not enter the city, but he got as close to the city as he possibly could.

And there he pitched his tent. And as is often the case when we make friends with the world, there's a drift that takes place. And we see this drift take place in the life of Lot. So that in Genesis chapter 14 and verse 12, if we go one chapter on, we see that Lot now went from living adjacent to the city to being a resident in the city.

And perhaps it was ominous foreshadowing on God's part because we saw how Lot, as he lived in that city, because of his association with the Sodomites and the Gomorrites, if you'd call them that, he was plundered and carried away by the four mighty kings from Mesopotamia.

And two of those kings, this is another, I think, aspect of ominous foreshadowing, two of those kings were the kings of the early nations of Assyria and Babylon, the very nations that God would use to punish his people and bring them into exile centuries later.

And if it wasn't for Abraham's heroic actions, that would likely, that would have been the end of Lot's story. And I think that most sensible people, if you were living in Sodom and Gomorrah and the conditions that were there, and you were carried away because of their own political folly, you might go, I think it's time to move.

Maybe we'll pick a different region of the valley. Maybe we'll go north, maybe south, east, west, wherever we go, but we will not stay here. But that's not what Lot does. What does Lot do? As we read the progression, we see that Lot is further entrenched in the lifestyle of Sodom.

So that by Genesis chapter 19, and our brother pointed this out last week, Lot doesn't just live next to the city. He doesn't just live in the city, but he's now seated at the town gates. And the significance of that is this, that Lot has become a local leader in the city of Sodom.

He's become a respected citizen who now occupies a place of prominence in the city. But as we arrive at our passage today, a great deal has changed since we saw Lot, since we first looked at him in Genesis 13, five.

Much has changed even since the beginning of the chapter in verse one, where he held a place of prestige at the city gates. As we arrive in verse 30, this is what we find. There are no more flocks, there are no more herds, there are no more tents, there are no more hired workers.

What do we have? Lot and his two daughters in a cave outside of Zoar, dwelling in a hillside. While Abraham, he tried to come to Lot's aid again, we saw that in his heroic intercession. While Abraham might have been able to sway the Lord so that Lot and his family would be saved.

The manner in which Lot and his family leave Sodom and Gomorrah is very similar to those who are spoken of in 1 Corinthians three and verse 15. Some of you might remember that passage where we read, if anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss though.

He himself will be saved, but only as through fire. That Lot is saved through fire. And so we find him in the hillside outside Zoar, probably still with the smell of sulfur and smoke in his tattered clothing.

And it would appear that even the location that Lot and his family settles in speaks to the dramatic nature of their escape. If we look at Genesis 19 and verse 19, we'll remember our brother spoke about this last week, how Lot took his time leaving the city.

And eventually when he was thrust of the city to the best of his ability, he sought to go as close from the city as he could while still being spared. So then in verses 19 and 20, he says he doesn't want to escape to the hills, that he's fearful of this, but he wants to go as far as Zoar.

But now, now that he has lost everything, now that he has seen the incredibly destructive power of a just God upon a sinful people, he's afraid even to go to Zoar. And so he goes to the first place to the hills beyond the city.

And John Calvin, I think in his commentary, he rightly observes this. He says he was expelled, expelled out of Zoar, expelled out of these lesser places that he would go by a blind anxiety of mind that drove him and hurried him into that cave.

This is what it looks like when man has a picture of the justice of God, of the power of God, of the sovereignty of God wielded in judgment. And then what comes next is as dark as anything that we saw, I think, in the early verses of Genesis 19.

Lot and his daughters, they've been removed from the heart of Sodom, but we see that Sodom and its ways have not been removed from their heart. And this is what happens. In verses 31 through 36, we see that they saw that their father was too old to marry, that they themselves had no prospects for marriage in that cave outside Zoar.

And so they hatched up one of the most despicable plans imaginable, that they were going to seduce their father by getting him drunk on wine, getting him so drunk that we see in the passage that he did not know when they laid down or when they arose.

And for two consecutive nights, they committed unspeakable acts with their father to carry on the family line. And it offers, I think, a devastating glimpse into the effects that Sodom and Gomorrah had on these two girls.

Because in verse eight, we read that at least at that time, his daughters were virgins when the angels came into Sodom and Gomorrah. But now that they are in the cave with their own father, they are no longer virgins.

Like I said, maybe this is the first time you've heard this. If you are jarred by this image, you should be. And for those of us who have read this passage several times before, if you are not jarred by this image, you should be.

It is a picture of the despicable nature of the fallen human heart, of the human condition. And once more, what we see in this passage is a recapitulation scene. You'll remember that in the garden, what took place, but Adam and Eve took from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

They ate from the forbidden fruit. And what became of them after they ate from that fruit? They were found naked and ashamed. Well, we saw that when there was just one righteous family left on the earth at the beginning of Genesis 6 in Noah and his family, what took place?

But Noah, being that they were the only righteous family, were placed in an ark. And there they survived the just judgment of God through that ark. And when Noah came out of the ark, where did we find ourselves?

In a garden. And what became of Noah in that garden? He didn't eat of the fruit this time. He drank of the fruit. And becoming drunk, what happened? His son, Ham, came into the tent and looked upon his nakedness so that he was found once again naked and ashamed.

But there's still another recapitulation because here we have Lot, the only righteous man. We see that from Abraham's intercession, coming out of this picture again of God's destructive judgment. He ends up in a cave.

And what does he do? He drinks from the fruit of the vine. And again, we find him and his daughters naked and utterly ashamed. And what is being conveyed by this recapitulation? Adam and Noah and Lot and so on and so forth.

God is telling us something about ourselves. He's telling us something of the pervasive nature of human sin. That when the Bible says, there are none who are righteous, no, not one, it means no, not one.

If you're visiting with us today, I'm not here to say you are a sinner and we are not. No, not one. All have gone aside. All have turned astray. Scripture says, together they have become worthless. And this is the picture of humanity before God.

Not just a picture of Lot. Not just a picture of Lot and his daughters and all of the generations that would come from them. It is a picture of your own heart through the mirror of Scripture. And verses 36 through 38 then tell us what resulted from this sin.

Both daughters we read became pregnant by their own father. And this is where I think it's really helpful as we're reading Scripture to slow down and to look at the significance of names. If you've ever read, for instance, the book of Ruth a few months ago, I remember telling our sister Mayanna as I was sitting at the table, just the significance of every single name in the book of Ruth and the role that it plays in the narrative if you're paying attention.

Well, the names of the two children are in some ways as grotesque as the way in which they were conceived. The name Moab sounds like the Hebrew phrase from father. That this is my son by my father, from my father.

Or that Lot's younger daughter as she bore the son Ben-Ami, his name means son of my paternal kinsman. It's the son of my dad. This is, you know, if this were a modern film, we'd hear the banjos in the background as the names are read.

It truly is a picture of the despicable nature of their conception. And as we've seen now multiple times in the book of Genesis that the children who are conceived by this unfaithfulness, the children who are conceived by the sinful relationship always end up being what the enemies or the foes of God's people.

Always the enemies. And so it is with Moab and the Ammonites. To the point, in fact, that if we look at Deuteronomy chapter 23 and verses three through six, we actually see that God tells the nation as they enter the promised land, he says, no Ammonite or Moabite is to enter the assembly of the Lord to the 10th generation after the nation enters the promised land.

And this was not because of the conception of these children, but their reception or the way that they received the nation of Israel as they came into the promised land. That they refused to help them.

They refused to give them bread and water. They even sent Balaam to curse the nation of Israel. And when that didn't work, in numbers 25, we read that the daughters of Moab, and I think that this is not coincidental, that the daughters of Moab seduced the sons of Israel.

So it reads that they whored after the daughters of Moab and bowed down to their gods. So as Moses is writing this to the nation as they're entering the promised land, he's showing them just as Lot was seduced by his own daughters, so you have been seduced by Moab's daughters.

That it is a picture not only of his human condition, but of your human condition. And so then in the end, like Noah's son, Ham, Lot's sons would become an accursed people. So much so that even later on in Zephaniah 2, verse 9, we read this.

"'Therefore, as I live,' declares the Lord of hosts, "'the God of Israel, Moab shall become like Sodom, "'and the Ammonites like Gomorrah, "'a land possessed by nettles and salt pits "'and waste forever.'".

So that what God says at the end of the story is this, that it will be as if they had remained in Sodom and Gomorrah when I rain down the fire and sulfur. And then what happens is, again, rather remarkable.

In the book of Genesis, we never hear from Lot again. We never read of him. This is the last act that we hear of his life, and then he is gone and he is forgotten until later in the Torah. Now, what do we make of all of this?

I think here astute readers are given an opportunity to reflect upon the just wages of sin. That Lot made friends with Sodom. He ignored the warning signs years before when Babylon and Assyria took him into exile.

He did not flee when he was told to by the angels. He was all too willing to linger in that city even as it stood under the promised judgment of God's decimating wrath, and he paid the price for it. And the passage that as I was thinking about this this week that immediately came to mind is Numbers 32 in verse 23, where we read these words, "'Be sure your sin will find you out.'".

And we have many such sayings that we repeat in our day. Sometimes you'll hear, maybe this is a rural Alberta saying, I'm not sure, but, "'Mess with the bull and you'll get the horns,' right? Or elsewhere, "'Play with fire and you will get burned.'".

Well, Numbers 32, 23 is the maxim for us. Be sure your sin will find you out. Or Proverbs 13, 15, the way of the transgressor is what? The way of the transgressor is hard. If you live by the sword, you will die by the sword.

You can be absolutely sure of it. If you treat sin lightly, if you consider obedience, offered to a holy God to be a small thing, you can count on it. Your sin will find you out every time without exception and without fail.

That we cannot play games with sin and expect that it will go well with us. That when the Lord tells us to flee, and do you know in the New Testament he does? When the Lord tells us to flee, we must flee.

Abraham's Fearful Return Toward Egypt

But we see something else in this story. In chapter 20, in verse one, we don't just see Lot and his daughters and their incestuous lineage. But in chapter 20, then we get a picture of Abraham, and that is Abraham's sinful cowardice.

And this is what we read in verse one. From there, Abraham journeyed toward the territory of the Negev. It lived between Kadesh and Shur, and he sojourned in Gerar. And Abraham said of Sarah, his wife, she is my sister.

And Abimelech, king of Gerar, sent and took Sarah. What is again? It's happening again. But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night and said to him, behold, you are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken, for she is a man's wife.

Now Abimelech had not approached her, so he said, Lord, will you kill an innocent people? Did he not himself say to me, she is my sister? And she herself said, he is my brother. In the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands, I have done this.

Then God said to him in the dream, yes, I know that you have done this in the integrity of your heart. And it was I who kept you from sinning against me. Therefore, I did not let you touch her. Now then, return the man's wife for he is a prophet so that he will pray for you and you shall live.

But if you do not return her, know that you shall surely die, you and all who are yours. So Abimelech rose early in the morning and called all his servants and told them all these things. And the men were very much afraid.

Then Abimelech called Abraham and said to him, what have you done to us? And how have I sinned against you that you brought on me and my kingdom a great sin? You have done to me things that ought not to be done.

And Abimelech said to Abraham, what did you see that you did this thing? And Abraham said, I did this because I thought there is no fear of God at all in this place and they will kill me because of my wife.

Besides, she is my sister, the daughter of my father, though not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife. And when God caused me to wander from my father's house, I said to her, this is the kindness you must do.

At every place to which you come, say of me, he is my brother. Then Abimelech took sheep and oxen and male servants and female servants and gave them to Abraham and returned Sarah, his wife, to him. And Abimelech said, behold, my land is before you, dwell where it pleases you.

To Sarah, he said, behold, I have given your brother a thousand pieces of silver. It is a sign of your innocence in the eyes of all who are with you. And before everyone, you are vindicated. Then Abraham prayed to God and God healed Abimelech and also healed his wife and female slaves so that they bore children, verse 18, for the Lord had closed all the wombs of the house of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham's wife.

Now, this is remarkable. We not only have this grotesque picture in verses 30 through 38, but now we have a puzzling picture beginning in chapter 20, that Abraham, and I must say this, this is some of the most puzzling behavior that we would expect from any man in the Bible.

If you recall just a few chapters earlier, what did Abraham do, or what did God do, excuse me, but appear to Abraham in Genesis 18? And what did he tell them? That they would have a child within what?

Within a year's time. That here, Abraham is on the doorsteps of receiving the promises of God that he has been awaiting his whole life. The entire time that he has been in Canaan, he has been waiting for the fulfillment of this promise.

And now that we are within one year of receiving that promise, what does Abraham do? He splits, he's gone. And where does he go? Abraham, we're told, journeyed toward the territory of Negev. Now, what is the Negev?

The Negev was a desert region, southwest of where Abraham currently was, southwest of the Dead Sea, that measures roughly 7 ,200 square kilometers. And he goes to the place that is perhaps one of the most uninhabitable regions in all of that area of southern Canaan.

And the logical question becomes this, why? Why would he go, and why does he go here? And I think that it's helpful sometimes to, I'm giving us some, maybe I'm thinking about hermeneutics, so this is coming to my mind.