Genesis 19 The Sodomites

Cornerstone Church

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It's on. All right, welcome to the study in the book of Genesis.

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We're gonna get started by asking Pastor John, who is back from Cooperstown now for two weeks, back with us.

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Everybody's back. This is a great turnout for the fall here. Let's open in prayer, if you will, brother.

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Our Lord, we come to you with anticipation to know you better, even as we study your word today.

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We thank you, Lord, that you promise that your word will enter into our hearts, change us, draw us to you.

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We pray that as Jeff teaches us, and there are some harsh lessons in Genesis 19 about following you or denying you.

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Pray that you give him the words to say that we would hear them and grow in them. In Jesus' name, amen.

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Amen. Has anybody noticed how quickly society is changing with regard to sexual ethics?

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Just to put that in perspective, imagine this. Barack Obama ran on traditional family rejecting same -sex marriage.

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Can you believe that? In 2008, he said he was opposed to same -sex marriage, and then he supposedly came around to it and evolved and progressed in his thinking.

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But can you imagine that even those on the left were not for same -sex marriage in 2008?

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Some of them. Wow. That's mind -blowing. And Obergefell, which brought same -sex marriage into this country, happened in what year?

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2015. That is less than a decade ago. When that happened, it seemed like America was really crossing a new threshold, on the precipice of tumbling down because we're redefining what

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God has defined for 6 ,000 years, all of human history. But in the next nine years that followed

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Obergefell, from 2015 to the present, we were introduced to something that no one in 2015 was thinking much about, and that is the idea of boys becoming girls and girls becoming boys.

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The idea of transgenderism. The slippery slope has led to more and more gross immorality.

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And when the 2020s rolled around, nobody was thinking that men dressed as women and pretending to be women and acting effeminate would go to libraries to read books to children.

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And so I have a question for you. In 2024, have we reached the end of the skid?

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Or is there still worse things to come? But God.

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With God, it is possible. Nothing is impossible. God could turn back this tide, this rising tide of sexual immorality and debauchery.

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But if God doesn't intervene, and wickedness continues to increase on the earth, we haven't seen nothing yet.

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There are still worse levels of depravity that the world is capable of. And we turn to that now in Genesis 19.

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Because as new as is gay marriage and transgenderism and drag queen story hours, the wickedness that we see in Genesis 19 would make the homosexual or the transgender or the drag queen of today blush.

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What we see is more wicked still. But for the grace of God, this is what would come to this country.

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And so as we study Genesis 19, it is not with a view to condemnation, but rather salvation.

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Because our desire is that every person who has been caught up in the homosexual movement, and that is what it is, it's a movement.

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It is a learned behavior, a taught behavior, a cultural contagion, not something that's invented in the mind of an individual.

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Any person born in Adam is capable of all kind of sin, right?

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But society as such conditions what is acceptable.

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The so -called Overton window shifts to the right or to the left. What society deems to be acceptable is what's called the

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Overton window. And we're living in a day when the Overton window has shifted drastically to the left, including things that used to be unimaginable.

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It was the case in the city of Sodom that bad progressed to worse and worse and worse to the point that we reach in Genesis 19.

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The Sodomites corrupted one another by practicing abominable customs.

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Now I use that phrase abominable customs because that is the conclusion of what God gives us in the holiness code.

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Anybody familiar where to go to in the law of Moses for the holiness code on sexual ethics?

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Boy, there's a pop quiz question for you. The so -called holiness code, which defines sexual sin, do you know?

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Well, it says it at the bottom of the sheet. Yes, and it's even in my main idea. It's in my main idea right at the top.

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The holiness code is Leviticus 18. And it talks about how in Egypt people did these abominable things.

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And now God is giving the promised land to Israel to overtake the

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Canaanites. And what it says at the end of the holiness code after explaining that all forms of incest and bestiality and homosexuality and all the sexual sins that were prevalent in Canaan are sinful, it concludes the holiness code by saying that's the reason that the land is vomiting out the

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Canaanites. Isn't that an amazing statement? The land vomited out the

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Canaanites because they were practicing bestiality, homosexuality, incest, and corollary to this, right smack dab in the middle of the holiness code,

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Leviticus 18, is the offering of babies to Molech.

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What does giving babies to Molech have to do with this list of sexual sins?

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Babies are the offspring of a man and a woman who lay together. And to kill that baby, the child who was born, the life given in the image of God from the beautiful union of man and woman in marriage, to so desecrate that beautiful gift is an offering to Molech.

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In the same way, abortion in our country is at root sexual immorality.

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Rather than desiring the good gift that God gives in a child, that child is so devalued that the child is thrown away.

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It really has sexual immorality at the root. People wanting to experience sexual pleasure, but hating the life that should come from that.

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It's all connected. And so when you read Leviticus 18, you'll remember this now, the holiness code,

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Leviticus 18, it is still God's moral law. God has defined sex as a good gift for man and woman, one man and one woman in marriage.

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So let's see what happens here when the sodomites have corrupted one another by practicing these abominable customs to the point where God destroys them all, vomits them out of the land, or in the case of the sodomites, rains fire from heaven from Yahweh.

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Let's read, John, would you be first? And we'll just go around the table, Genesis 19, one to three. The two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom.

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When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them, bowed himself with his face to the earth, and said, my lords, please turn aside to your servant's house and spend the night and wash your feet.

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Then you may rise up early and go on your way. They said, no, we will spend the night in the town square.

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But he pressed them strongly, so they turned aside to him and entered his house, and he made them a feast and baked 11 bread, and they ate.

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Okay, Lot's problem began in Genesis chapter 13, not here in Genesis 19.

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Because in Genesis 13, he was given a choice. Abraham said, you pick the place where you want to live.

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I'm tired of having our herdsmen fight one another over the wells and the water. You pick what part you want to live in.

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And Genesis 13, 12 says, Abram settled in the land of Canaan while Lot settled among the cities of the valley, and watch this, moved his tent as far as Sodom.

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Friendship with the world is enmity towards God. First Corinthians 15, 33 says, do not be deceived, bad company ruins good morals.

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And 2 Peter 2, 8 says, for as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard.

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When Lot pitched his tent towards Sodom, he got so close to the sins of the world that he was rubbing elbows with it.

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He saw it, he heard it, and it began to affect his own mind, the mind of his family, and we're about to see the devastating consequences.

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But righteous Lot had no business living among the Sodomites. Holiness required him to come out and be separate, not to cozy up and enjoy the worldly benefits.

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Now, what worldly benefits would have come to Lot and his family by living near the

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Sodomites? Worldly benefits. Food.

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It's an urban area. They would have had access to goods and services. If you live off by yourself in the field, you have nobody who's making shoes and making wonderful things, things that are good.

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Goods and services, training among them. So there were good things that Lot was attracted to.

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It seemed a more prosperous life to live in Sodom and pitch his tent towards Sodom.

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But it also caused -

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Yes, and that's the point. So the first, is Lot righteous or unrighteous?

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Righteous. According to Peter, he was righteous Lot, which meant he was saved, and yet he will become corrupted by the world around him.

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Okay? So he himself will be saved. The angel will rescue him out because he's the one and only saved.

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How many would it have required for God to save the entire city? 10.

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Because Abraham in chapter 18, and John taught this so well last week, he was interceding with God and he got it all the way down to 10.

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If there were 10 left righteous in the land, God would have saved the entire city on account of the 10.

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Yeah. Of course. Sinful man.

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Mm. He became unrighteous. Are we capable of doing that in today's society?

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Yes. We are. And that's the question we have to ask ourselves. Is that your point?

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If our culture's become this wicked, and this is the water we swim in, how much has that water affected us without our knowing it?

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What things do we allow our eyes to see, our ears to hear, that have just become so normal because the society, the

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Overton window, has said this is perfectly fine, that we accept it? Lot was too cozy with Sodom.

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That was the problem. So let's see how bad it got for Lot. That was a great question.

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And Sandy, would you read verses four to eight? Because the answer for Lot is although he was saved, his mind had become utterly corrupt from being around so much sexual immorality.

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The first thought of his mind. Now, I would hope that even though his mouth spoke before he thought, he wouldn't have gone through with what he proposed here.

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The Holy Spirit would have restrained this evil. But his first thought shows how influenced he was by the sodomy around him and all of the evil and the wickedness in the culture.

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Sandy, four to eight. Before they laid down, the men of the city called to Lot and said to him, who came to you tonight, bring them out to us that we may have relations with them.

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

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Now, behold, I have two daughters who have not had relations with man.

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Please, let me bring them out to you and do to them whatever you like. Only do nothing to these men in as much as they have come under the shelter of my roof.

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Wow, what a dad. Shoot, boy. What a wicked dad. Guys, what the impulse motivating

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Lot here is he knew that these men were holy men. There was something about being in the presence of angels that told

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Lot he had to protect these lives. But he underestimated the evil that he was up against and he didn't value and truly treasure the ones entrusted to him.

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What does he call the wicked sodomites? In verse seven. Brothers.

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Friends. Friends is one translation. I have brothers. We have to look at the Hebrew to know what's more accurate.

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But in the ESV, we have brothers. And I think that indicates how Lot thinks about these people.

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He's been around them so much. He knows their kids, but it says young and old.

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He knows the grandparents. He's probably helped them with the tasks of life and people have helped him.

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They're not always burning with lust. Maybe that's under the surface all the time, but sometimes

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Lot is just ordinarily living with these people. They're his people. He calls them brothers.

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Now, is it true that all of us, everyone in the world, are children of God?

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False. It is not true. Now, there's a sense in which it is. We're all made in the image of God and some people use that term children of God, it's the image of God.

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But in John chapter eight, Jesus tells the Pharisees, you're not children of God. Your father is the devil.

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A true child of God, the ones who we call brother and sister, you are my brothers and sisters because we are justified by faith.

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We have a genuine faith in Yahweh. He calls them brothers because he underestimates who they really are.

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The true wickedness of their condition. He thinks these people might be messing up tonight, but we can overlook that.

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Think about what they are proposing to do. Bring these men out so that they can rape them.

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And his solution is, no, take my daughters. How wicked is that?

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It's unthinkable. That's how perverse Lot's mind had become.

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The proposed remedy for their burning shows how the sodomite way had influenced

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Lot's mind. Sadly today, if you look around the religious landscape, you have plenty of Christians who are saying that sodomy is no big deal.

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As a matter of fact, they would say that we shouldn't even use the term sodomy.

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You're the hateful one for using the term sodomy. That term is canceled in our culture.

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Did you know that? Because it implies that there's something flagrant and violent and wrong and unnatural, which is exactly what our text is saying today about sodomy.

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We must continue with biblical categories and continue to allow the Bible to define what is right and wrong, and not let the culture begin to press us into its mold.

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Romans 12, that's what's happened a lot here, obviously. He's become worldly. His thinking is corrupt.

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He's thinking like a sodomite, not like a child of God. Next, verse nine,

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Barbara. So, when

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Lot, who had been their friend, he had traded with them, they knew each other. When he stood up to them, did they say, okay, fine, we'll do right?

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No, they were ready to kill him, too. And in fact, I find this so instructive, what they say.

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This fellow came to sojourn, and he has become the judge? Nothing enrages a sodomite like judging their sexuality as wicked.

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The great evil in a postmodern culture is not sexual sin, which is breaking the design of God for sexuality.

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It's not even murder, because that's what they're intending to do. They're willing to kill

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Lot to get to these men. The great evil is judging.

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The great command, overarching all, is thou shalt not judge.

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But in John chapter seven, Jesus says, stop judging by human appearance, and make a right judgment.

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In Matthew chapter seven, where Jesus says, judge not, lest you may be judged, he goes on to say, you do need to judge the difference between a wolf and a sheep.

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You need to judge by fruit. You can tell a tree by the fruit it bears. So he's not saying all judging is wrong.

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He's saying you need to make right judgments based on a right standard, not by outward appearances.

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And yet, what the sodomite is saying, you cannot judge me. God cannot judge me.

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It says, well, trees are worse than them. It's obvious that they are not good.

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That's right. So do you think that those who have justified in their own mind sins that are against nature, because God's the creator of nature, do you think they still know that what they're doing is wrong?

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Yeah. Yep. Sure. But they suppress that knowledge, according to Romans one, in ungodliness, exchanging the glory of God for a lie, and so they're given over in the lusts of their flesh to impurity to do what ought not be done, and then exchanging even the natural relations for unnatural.

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So it's a giving over of the mind. Prior to these behaviors, they would have found them abhorrent.

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Their conscience would have screamed the first time, but by searing the conscience, a person becomes callous to what used to be a terrible thing.

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So yeah, down deep they know, but they're so seared in conscience that they might have convinced themselves that it's fine.

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Yeah. Yeah. What appears that. Yeah. They're afraid to say they're all in this big.

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Yeah. That's right. Stan, do you think then that because someone says, you're not allowed to judge me, this should keep us from preaching the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

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We keep preaching the truth. We do. But unfortunately, they were afraid to stand up for what was right.

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Right. And how will we be regarded if we continue to say what's right?

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Ironically, those who are doing this villainous thing are painting Lot as the immoral one.

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It's everything upside down now. Isaiah chapter five. Light is darkness, darkness is light.

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They reviled him and said all manner of evil against him falsely. Yes. For his sake.

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Amen. Amen. Sermon on the Mount, Matthew five. All right, so Ivan, would you read for us verses 10 and 11.

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But the men reached out their hands and brought Lot into the house with them and shut the door, and they struck with blindness the men who were at the entrance of the house, both small and great, so that they wore themselves out, groping for the door.

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We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against angels and demons, these powers in dark places.

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Are these forces strong? Is the lustful burning of these men a powerful force to control them?

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Obviously, yes. But it says in verse 10, but the men.

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Who are the men in view here? These are the angels. These are the messengers of God.

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He makes his angels winds, his servants a flame of fire. These angel messengers are more powerful than the power of darkness involved in this situation.

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But listen, that's important news. We are in a spiritual battle against a sodomite spirit in this country, but who has the upper hand?

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Or better said, who has the stronger hand? We do.

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How long have Christians been backpedaling and constantly on the run? When we don't realize, but the men reached out their hands.

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They were stronger than the men trying to press through. Greater is he who is in us than he who is in the world.

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The wicked forces of evil were trying to accost these men, but they were not afraid of them.

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They were able to reach out, pull out in, close the door, and then what do they do in verse 11?

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Strike them with blindness. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. All of the power, the true power, is in the hand of the

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Lord. In a moment, he can strike someone with blindness or he can open blind eyes.

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Just as he struck these with blindness, he could mercifully open the eyes of a blind man to see their sinful ways turn and be healed.

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Do you believe in the power of God to heal someone who has been caught up in homosexuality?

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Greater is he who is in us. Christ is more powerful than this demonic spirit. It's amazing because they're still groping for the door.

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They still want to carry out their wicked designs. The reason it's unimaginable is because we're thinking in terms of human reason.

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At this point, their human reason is out the window. These are supernaturally demonic thoughts that are carrying them along.

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They're motivated not just by human designs, but a supernatural form of evil.

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This is demonic at this point. That's why they're still going, yeah. Is it the angels that struck them with blindness?

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Yes, yeah, yep. And remember, this is gonna be important in just a minute. These are two angels, but there were three that appeared to Abraham.

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One of those three was called YHWH, the Tetragrammaton, Yahweh. So we think that was probably the second member of the

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Trinity, Jesus, and he sent the two angels to go bring this judgment. But guess what?

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That third one comes back into the story in just a minute. So, Stan, would you read for us verses 12 to 14?

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The two men said to Lot, do you have anyone else here?

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Sons -in -law, sons or daughters, or anyone else in the city who belongs to you?

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Get them out of here, because we are going to destroy this place.

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The outcry to the Lord against his people is so great that he has sent us to destroy it.

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So Lot went out and spoke to his sons -in -law, who were pledged to marry his daughters.

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He said, hurry and get out of this place, because the Lord is about to destroy the city.

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But his sons -in -laws thought he was joking. His sons -in -law thought he was...

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Joking. His sons -in -law were sodomite. Yeah. And their view of Lot, righteous

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Lot, preaching the truth to them, a warning of coming judgment, is to consider him a joke.

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Did you know that the world thinks that you are a joke? Yeah. The world does not see a difference between you and Westboro Baptist.

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They think you're saying God hates fags, like they say with Westboro Baptist, with a billboard of hate.

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They see no difference between Westboro Baptist and you. And they think that you and I are a joke.

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They think we're dumb. They think that we're unreasoned, backwards, on the wrong side of history, religiously deluded, unreasonable.

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The truth is the exact opposite. We warn of a coming judgment.

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There will be a hell of fire. Luke 3 .16 talks about baptism with the

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Holy Spirit in fire, and Luke 3 .17 talks about that baptism of fire being hell, where the chaff is burned.

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God will gather the wheat into a barn, and the weeds will be burned, and there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

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This is Jesus' teaching about a coming judgment on the sexually immoral.

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In all of the vice lists that we have in the New Testament, I think everyone, at least the vast majority of them, begin with sexual sins.

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The fruit of the flesh in Galatians 5. Again and again, sexual sins are the forerunner, the first thing, but this world says, my body, my choice, that each person can do with their body as they please, and no one is going to tell them how to behave sexually.

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But God has given this warning and this plea to mercy. If you actually think about it, what is

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Lot doing for these people? Is he hating them? For their sodomy? No, he's trying to rescue them.

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He's saying, come out from this coming judgment, and they think he's a joke. They don't listen, they laugh it off, and they are ultimately destroyed.

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Verses 15 to 22, and who's up next? Is it you, Bob? Oh, Rick, okay, thanks.

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Then seized him and his wife and became merciful to him.

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And they brought him out and set him outside the city. And as they brought him out, one said, escape for your life.

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Do not look back or stop anywhere in the valley. Escape to the hills, lest you be swept away.

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And Lot said to them, oh no, my lords. Behold, your servant has found favor in your sight, and you have shown me great kindness in saving my life.

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But I cannot escape to the hills, lest a disaster overtake me and I die. Behold, this city is near enough to flee to, and it is a little one.

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Let me escape there. Is it not a little one? And my life will be saved. He said to them, behold,

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I grant you this favor also, that I will not overture the city at which you have spoken.

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Escape there quickly, for I can do nothing till you arrive there. Therefore, the name of the city was called

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Zoar. The world thinks that the God of the Old Testament is a different God from that of the new.

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They say that Jesus preached love and tolerance and acceptance and affirmation, but the

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God of the Old Testament was all about judgment and fury of fire. Nothing could be further from the truth.

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That was Marcionism, the first so -called Christian who tried to separate the

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God of the New Testament from the Old, was Marcion. He thought there were two different gods.

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He was a Gnostic, not a Christian. But the Christian view is that the same

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God of Genesis 19 is the same God of the New Testament. Jesus spoke about hell more than anybody else in the

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Bible. Did you know that? And not only is the Old Testament like this horrifying chapter, the world hates this chapter of judgment against sodomy in Genesis 19, but they're missing the most obvious and glaring part of it.

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It is a story of grace. Irresistible grace saved

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Lot. And the grace of God deserves all the credit for rescuing him, and not only him, but the people of Zohar.

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Did you notice that Lot began to plead? It's a little one, this little city. Let me go live there so I'm not living in a cave by myself, which ultimately he goes and does anyway.

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But the fact that he interceded for this little town, God said, okay, the fire's gonna miss them.

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There's mercy in that, in response to prayer. Should we pray and intercede for those who are destined or it appears that they're destined for judgment?

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We ought to pray. But here's what I want you to notice from this section. Look at verse 16. But he lingered.

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Lot almost missed the boat, Noah's boat. He was almost destroyed in the judgment because he lingered.

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And I think the point here is that the grace was irresistible, meaning the angels actually mercifully took them and grabbed them by the hand.

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This is how grace comes to us. It was nothing in us. We keep lingering in the world.

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We keep looking back, as Lot's wife will do. It was not us that saved us.

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When someone asks you how it is you came to faith, you need to give all the credit and all the glory to God.

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You need to say, but for the grace of God, there go I. I was lingering in the world, but he grabbed me.

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He took hold of me. He took my hand and saved me. It was nothing in me. Even my will was dead set against him.

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The world was so in me that I couldn't let go. But grace took me.

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All the glory is to the praise of his glorious grace, Ephesians 1 says. And that's what

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I see here. And then what does it say in the second half of verse 16? The Lord being merciful.

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It's all the mercy of God. It says in verse 19, your servant has found favor.

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Favor is a synonym for grace. This is all by grace that anybody was saved.

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The marvel and the most astonishing thing about Genesis 19 is not that a holy and righteous

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God would destroy by fire a wicked and sinful people. The marvel of this story is that God would be gracious to a man like Lot, who almost gave his own daughters up to be raped, who lingered when the angels were saying, come now.

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He was disobedient. And yet by grace, he was taken hold of and God rescued him.

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God rescues sinners like us. So we're not better than anyone else. We give all the praise and glory that he rescued us from where our flesh would have gone to.

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And you have a message of grace to deliver. You can call people to repent and believe and assure them that if they do, they also will be saved.

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They can belong to Zoar, not Sodom or Gomorrah. You can intercede for them, you can pray for them, and you can call them out of Sodom.

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So verses 23 and 24, Bob, now you're up. By the time

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Lot reached Zoar, the sun had risen over the land. Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on the

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Lord. Did you catch that?

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I said to pay attention to that third man who was left behind with Abraham. It doesn't here just say, the

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Lord rained down fire from heaven. It says, the

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Lord, and do you notice that it's all capital letters? What does that word, what is the transliteration of that in the

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Hebrew? Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh, correct. It comes from the Tetragrammaton. Tetra meaning four, grammatron, letters.

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From the four letters, what are the four letters? Y -H -W -H. Wherever we see the capital

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L, capital O, capital R, capital D, that's the Tetragrammaton. That's Y -H -W -H.

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We say it as Yahweh, but we're supplying the vowels. The A and the E. We're adding that.

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When you see this, it is the formal personal name of God. This is how you know him.

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It's Yahweh. And Yahweh saves. Yahweh is salvation. Yah, Yah, Yeshua.

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Yeshua, Jesus. The name Jesus means Yahweh is salvation. Here you have that second member of the

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Trinity when it says, then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the

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Lord out of heaven. Who's the Lord in heaven? Who's Yahweh in heaven? God the

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Father. He sends this fiery judgment from heaven, but who is this other

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Lord? How are there two Lords in one sentence? He's really one God, two persons of the same being.

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Here you have the Son of God who's with Abraham. Abraham had just been interceding, and now perhaps he's gone to the edge of the cliff.

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He's overlooking the city. And Jesus, before incarnation, calls down fire and judgment from the

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Father. Does the Son have wrath or only the Father? They both have wrath.

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Revelation 6, 17, when the people are hiding themselves in the clefts of the rock, save us from the wrath of the

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Lamb and of God the Father. So amazingly, you have

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Jesus, before he was called Jesus, it's the Son of God, second member of the

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Trinity, calling down fire from his Father. God is righteous and he is just.

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So in the next verses, we have verses 20, what is it, seven and eight?

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25. Oh, we have 25 and 26. Thank you, Bob. And so, Sue, you've got that, 25 and six. This story is interesting, isn't it?

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Why did she look back? Love of the world.

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The love of the world and everything in it. Isn't that our snare too? How much the world that we're called to leave behind still beckons us and calls us back?

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Especially habits that we might have formed before Christ in our BC era, they want to drag us back in.

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The deceitfulness of wealth. The promises of pleasure.

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First John will talk about the lusts of the eyes and of the flesh and the pride of life.

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These things beckon us back and sadly, she was told if she looked back,

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God's judgment would fall on her too and what happens? She turns into a pillar of salt.

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Did you know when they discovered Sodom and Gomorrah not long ago? You can see an exhibit of this at Museum of the

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Bible in Washington, D .C. They have to this day been able to, in that very region, detect incredibly high levels of salt and saltiness.

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Very interesting, isn't it? Of course, there's the Dead Sea right there, the saltiest place on earth and here she became a pillar of salt.

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She probably also figured it. Right. Oh yeah, yeah.

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She's certainly not going along to the rescue from her heart. She's being grabbed by the wrist and Lot is like, come, we're gonna die and she looks back and now he's holding salt in his hand.

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Ooh. That'd have been weird. All right, verses 27 to 29.

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And Candy, you're up. And Abraham went early and he had stood before the low cities of the valley through the cities in which

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Lot had lived. Hmm. One of God's purposes in judgment is to vindicate those who were persecuted in his righteous cause.

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Psalm 91 talks about the protection of the righteous. He's gonna cover us with his feathers.

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We don't need to fear the arrow that flies by day or the pestilence that stalks at night. But God is protecting us.

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It also says, you will only look with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked.

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Psalm 91a. The righteous will be vindicated and will see

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God's judgment fall. How many of y 'all have eyes to see that what's happening in our country is already judgment?

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The beginnings, there's worse, there's a sprinkling of salt and fire that is to come, the day of wrath.

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But what we're already seeing is that God is judging a nation that has turned away from Christ.

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But we will be vindicated. Right now, as you make your prophetic stand,

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Noah was vindicated after his preaching. There's a lot about that in 1 Peter and Hebrews 11. Here, the idea is that Lot sees with his eyes the destruction of the wicked.

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These were the ones that wanted to kill him just hours before, that were groping for him.

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And these were the wicked. And he pled with them not to do it. They mocked him.

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Who are you to judge us? If you will continue as a prophet, in a little peace sense, you're not

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Jeremiah, but you have a prophetic role, you will be mocked, you will be hated.

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What does the world do with prophets? They kill them, ultimately.

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If not physically, at least your reputation. But here's what we trust in, the vindication of the

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Lord. Isaiah 51, 21 talks about it, he vindicates his own.

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When it talks about the weapons that we are given, he also refers to our vindication by those things.

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It doesn't look like it at first, does it? It looks like Lot is the loser, but now, after God's judgment falls, it becomes clear, the distinction between the righteous and the wicked.

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The righteous will be vindicated and will see God's judgment fall. Now, the most troubling passage,

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I just left it as one block, I don't want to comment much on it. Let's just read it and lament, verses 30 to 38.

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Oh yeah, you can pass it to Tim. Yeah, you get to read the worst story in the Bible. Now Lot went up out of Zoar and lived in the hills with his two daughters.

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For he was afraid to live in Zoar, so he lived in a cave with his two daughters.

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And the firstborn said to the younger, our father is old and there is not a man on earth to come in to us, said to the younger.

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Our father is, sorry, after the manner of all the earth, come let us make our father drink wine and we will lie with him that we may preserve offspring from our father.

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So they made their father drink wine that night and the firstborn went in and lay with her father.

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He did not know when she lay down or when she arose. The next day, the firstborn said to the younger, behold,

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I lay last night with my father. Let us make him drink wine tonight also.

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Then you go in and lie with him that he may preserve offspring from our father.

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So they made their father drink wine that night also and the younger arose and lay with him.

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And he did not know when she lay down or when she arose. Thus, both the daughters of Lot became pregnant by their father.

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The firstborn bore a son and called his name Moab. He is the father of the

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Moabites to this day. The younger also bore a son and called his name Benamai.

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He is the father of the Ammonites to this day. So the sexual perversion of Sodom had so twisted the thinking of Lot's daughters that they concocted an incestuous plan.

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It's awful. It's a horrible story. And you know, one of the big plans here of God in defining this for us in the book of Genesis is to explain the origin of Israel's enemies, the

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Moabites and the Ammonites. These are a people born of incestuous sin.

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Remember where we began this teaching with the holiness code of Leviticus 18. It begins by saying, you shall not do as they do.

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What were the girls' problem? They were raised in Sodom. And if the public schools have come to a point where sodomy is not only allowed, but taught and accepted and encouraged and affirmed, and anyone who goes against that is considered a bigot to be cast out,

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I think parents need to pull their kids out of that sodomy. I think it's come to that point.

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I don't think it's always been at that point. I don't think this country always welcomed sodomy, but since Obergefell of 2015, and then since transgenderism of the late 2019s, brand new to this country, and then since drag queen story hours, and the books that fill the libraries now,

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I think there has to come a point where we no longer allow our kids, like these girls, to be raised in that environment.

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So we went to the library in Morristown just weeks ago, and we confronted the librarian about the books that they have on the shelf.

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In their case that they parade for the children to see, all of the books were affirming of transgenderism.

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And I said, well, where is even the balance in this? Let's look up all the books that you have on gender identity.

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And so she said, oh, we have both sides. And I said, well, show me. And she pulled up a list of 24 books, and all 24 of them taught the gender confusion line.

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It's what they're teaching at Morristown Library and in the schools. So this is a very crucial moment in our country.

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I would just say to you that if you read Genesis 19, take heed that you do not fall.

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Parents, be aware of the dangers of what we expose our kids to. Do you think, see,

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Lot didn't even know what happened to him. But he never thought that his daughters would be capable of something like that.

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And the fruit of that was a warring people to perpetually be the enemies of the people of God.

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It's not too late, church, for us to begin preaching the truth, to call people out of the darkness and into his glorious light.

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There is deliverance in the name of the Lord. Even little Zoar, a town that knew nothing of it, benefited from the intercession of Lot.

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Yeah, Tim. I think cultures like this produce confusion. Yeah. And these girls were confused, but also, do you think that they thought they were the last people on earth or something and they needed to repopulate?

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I don't think so, because it said that Lot knew that Zoar was there, but he said, seems a little dangerous over there.

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I'm just gonna, it's like he had a wake -up call. I'm gonna take my daughters and raise them alone in a cave.

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Little did he know, though, he couldn't get Sodom out of them. He got them out of Sodom, but he didn't get

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Sodom out of them. That's the moral of the story, and that's a huge danger we have to be careful of.

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Let's pray. John, would you mind closing us in a word of prayer? Lord, we are in the midst of a spiritual war.

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We cannot deny the agenda that Satan has to make himself like the most holy

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God, and so he is on the attack to replace the truth of God with his lie here in this world.

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We are not able to defend ourselves against Satan, except that we have the power of the

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Holy Spirit. Greater is he who is in us. These teachings are so important.

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We pray, Lord, that we continually be a people of prayer and surrender to God and to his truth, and that we stand against the lies of Satan.