Genesis 19

This passage is WILD!  We'll take time to discuss what the sin of Sodom was but much more importantly, learn from Lot's experience.  While the moral of this story is often misunderstood, we can benefit in our relationship with God by paying attention to what's happening.

Other scriptural references to Sodom:

• Ezekiel 16:49
• Isaiah 1:10-17
• Isaiah 3:9
• Jeremiah 23:14
• Lamentations 4:6
• Matthew 10:5-10

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hey there. I am so glad that you've joined us today. Our time in the scriptures is going to be a little bit different. Today, in particular, I'm asking you to read the entirety of our passage, which is Genesis chapter 19, on your own, and then jump back into this podcast when you've completed that. It won't take you super long, but it really will help you quite a bit if you read it first and then come back. So go ahead and pause this, go on and read it, and then come on, come on back. Okay, uh what are you still doing listening? Have you read it yet? Okay, you have. Cool, radical. Uh now we can process this together, and also thank you for putting up with my little bit of nonsense. We're going to jump into things, but first let's pray. Jesus, thank you for this wonderful day that you've given us. God, thank you for your word. Uh, and thank you, Lord, for all of the different things that we learn about ourselves, about humanity, and most importantly, about you. God, we're here to meet with you. Would you please meet with us? Amen. All right, let's just do a quick little recap. If we go back to Genesis 18, you'll remember that uh that Abraham had hosted those three visitors, they'd had a meal together, and we're we're pretty certain, just by context and the way that it talks about them, that they weren't regular people, that they were angels, and then it talks about the Lord also being present in that. And then after that, they uh they leave, they leave the meal, and and Abraham walks with them to just kind of send them on their way. And that leads to a conversation. The two angels head down towards Sodom and Gomorrah, and uh, and then Abraham, of course, is is talking uh there and just saying, uh, look, I know that you this is your plan to to wipe out and judge uh this city, but for would you would you hold back for the sake of 50? And then they kind of keep going back and forth all the way down to 10. So it it ends with that idea of the Lord would relent and restrain uh judgment if there were at least 10 people who were righteous and following him. So the question for us as we start this part of the story is did the Lord find those 10 righteous men or those 10 righteous people in Sodom and Gomorrah? Apparently not. And that's just a really, really sad thing to have happen that that uh not even 10 in the midst of that city were were interested in following God and living a life that was right uh according to God's word. And then we kind of are going to move here into those first about nine verses or so and just talk about what the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was. What was this stuff, or what were the things, maybe, maybe it's not just one thing, what were the things that they were engaging in that brought about this judgment upon them? Now, the first thing I wanted to say is it's likely not the first thing that we think of. And we have kind of even used Sodom and Gomorrah in a uh, like we even have that term, Sodomite, it's an older term, we don't really use it much now, but to refer to homosexuality and behaviors that are connected with that. But it's really not the main thing that's going on here. So we can actually trust the scriptures on this and hang in there with me for a minute. And I'm gonna let you know also that uh I have read Preston Sprinkle, and I would encourage you to read him as well. Uh, People to Be Loved is the title of the book. Um, go ahead and read that if you if you feel if you're interested in really kind of delving into what the scriptures do say uh about that topic. You don't have to agree with him, by the way, but he handles the scriptures really, really well. He engages with with the language, he engages with the conversation. It just it's it's good. You'll be able to have a better conversation about this with yourself or with the people that you that you love and you care about. So I'm just pointing you that direction. So some of this is like he already did the work, and I was like, oh yeah. And then I kind of followed up and and did my own sort of on his coattail, so to speak. So if we if we go through the other scripture references that mention Sodom, uh none of them have anything really to do with with same-sex attraction, with same-sex behavior, even. It's just not a part of the equation. Let me show you what I mean. Ezekiel chapter 16, verse 49. So, okay, this is afterwards that this all happened, but it says, now this was the sin of your sister Sodom. She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed, and unconcerned. They did not help the poor and needy, right? So the sin of Sodom was a bunch of different things here, right? Arrogance, gluttony, not caring for the poor and needy, like all of those things were a part of what's going on. And I'm sure that there was more, but those are the things that are identified and named. Then we have all of these other things. I'm gonna just drop these scriptures into the description of the show. So if you want to look at them on your own time, you can do that. But Isaiah 1, verses 10 through 17, Isaiah 3, 9, Jeremiah 23, 14. I know I'm going fast. Again, you can just look in the show's description, uh Lamentations 4, verse 6, and then also Matthew chapter 10, verses 5 through 10. They all mention Sodom by name, and in each of those, we we don't see any reference to homosexuality. Now, let me come back to what's actually happening in Genesis 19. The thing that the men of the city were threatening to do was absolutely vile and disgusting. Uh, you read it for yourself, and nobody would suggest in any way that that was acceptable or okay or something that we should gloss over. That absolutely was a total violation of the thing that they were setting their minds to do. So we can we can understand that part. It's there. But in regards to the conversation, the broader conversation, the scriptures do speak to the issue of homosexuality and and other other passages I think carry far more weight and are much clearer on that subject. I'm just acknowledging now that Genesis 19 isn't really one of them. It's not helpful to that conversation. So let let's move it back into okay, what do what do we do with this passage and what can we learn from it? So I really wanted to pay attention to Lot's his responses, the way that he seems to be conducting himself. And the scripture doesn't seem to like really endorse what he's doing, but it doesn't totally call him out on everything. But we we do see, like, if you pay attention to what's going on, it kind of reveals what's happening uh in him. So the first thing I wanted to point out as a general observation about Lot is that he clearly does not believe God or seek God's deliverance in this particular desperate situation, or maybe at all. Question mark? We're not totally sure. And when you think about Lot's story, like it parallels Abraham's, doesn't it? Except almost at every point along the way, he chooses differently. And I I think we are supposed to notice that. I think we are supposed to notice that Abraham believed God and it's credited, credited, brrrr, credited to him as righteousness. And Lot almost always plays some kind of a compromising role in his connection to God. Here's what I mean more specifically. You can look at verse eight, right? He offers his own daughters to the wicked men, right? There may be some cultural things going on there that we don't understand that are foreign to us. I just can't imagine. I can't imagine that there's any world in which that would be uh acceptable at all. So he's trying to quell the riot that's taking place. He tries to negotiate with the wicked men, kind of by doing what he uh what's there in verse 8. But then when they press in, the angels, the and you know, the scripture here, it does talk about them as men and angels, but those are interchangeable in the way that they're used. The angels have to literally pull him back into the house in order to save him. You can read about that in verses nine through eleven. Actually, you did read about that, didn't you? Yeah, I I knew you did. All right, and then uh we also see him hesitate, right? The angel, this is verse 15 and 16. Uh the angels tell him to hurry. Like, you need to get out of here and and and do it quickly. Grab, grab your people and go. And and then it clearly says in verse 16 that he that he hesitates, right? And so then uh then the angel literally like takes him and uh and his wife and his daughters by the hand. The sons-in-law had already, they just thought, you know, our crazy father-in-law, he's just joking. So they're they're a part of that over there. But he just, yeah, he doesn't do the thing. He just the the Lord needs to actually physically uh yeet him. Man, I'm so old. All right, yeet him out of the of the city and and get him towards safety. So he he's hesitant in that, and and then and I I'm not sure how much we should make of this or not, so just hold it for what it's worth. But he negotiates on on the fleeing part, too. And he says, like the mountains are too far away. I can't make it there. Now, maybe it was because of age and health and speed and all all of those sorts, maybe that's really all it was, you know, to do with. But he says, Can I just go to this town, it's nearby, instead of the mountains. And again, maybe that's all we should read into it, that it was just he's an older guy, he just doesn't think he can make it to the mountains. But it's from that little town that his wife looks back. And I can at least argue that if Lot had been all in on fleeing from Sodom and Gomorrah, if he'd been like, nope, this is what we're doing, these uh these angels have guided us correctly, let's just go, and we're gonna also trust God to get us to where we need to be. You can, I think, accurately say that maybe his life, or his life, his wife, survives and doesn't look back because she's not able to. Food for thought is just something to mull over a little bit. And then it seems, again, this is just an overall thing, it seems like the reason God actually rescues him and his small family is just out of kindness to Abraham. And again, you don't want to make too much of this, but I was just kind of wondering like, was Lot righteous? You know, that was Abraham's whole thing with the Lord. If you just can find this many righteous people, would you spare the city? And and maybe Lot was. Maybe that's unfair to kind of question that, but but it seems like God's motivation for rescuing Lot has a lot to do with him. And in fact, it actually says remembering Abraham, it says it towards the end of the chapter. And then finally, uh, and and this is kind of at the tail end of it, and sometimes we forget that this part is here, but his daughters, who had lost their fiancees, or the um, excuse me, not their fiances, their their husbands, his daughters follow their their dad's example of moral compromise and ultimately give birth to sons that would become nations of their own. But both of them would be certainly outside of the covenant and uh and they would be a problem for the people of Israel. It just none of it went well. None of this went well at all. So now that I've abused Lot and his legacy all the way through, what can we learn from him? How do we take this story and and not only make sense of it, but use it in a way that's beneficial for us? And there's really one, for me, essential idea here. And there may be more that that the Lord brings to your mind, and if so, that's wonderful. But uh here's what it is for me. It's don't hang around the sin like it's somehow okay. Run. Don't don't don't get all kind of cozy with it. Jesus taught his disciples when he taught them to pray, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one, right? Matthew 6, 13 is there. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 10 verses 13 and 14, no temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind, and God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it. And then in verse 14 he says, Therefore, my dear friends, flee from idolatry. Flee from idolatry, flee from it. And I think we need to be ready to take sin that seriously. Do I think that the Lord is going to use, you know, uh some kind of a cosmic thing to judge particular, you know, little locations or whatever because they're they're in sin today? No, I don't think that that's happening, at least like in a in a regular kind of a way. I think there might be some of that happens, you know, towards the end when he returns. But but there is this thing that we we get we get way too comfortable with sin, don't we? And we need to be willing to to take it more seriously than we do, to not find ourselves hesitating about our morality, and just leaping, leaping away from it and towards Jesus. If you remember nothing else from our time together today, remember that. Run. Run away from the thing that will entangle you. Let me pray for us. Jesus, thank you for this good day that you have given us. God, would you be our strength and our courage? Would you also be uh our deliverer, not just from the bad things that happen, but from uh the schemes of the evil one, from the temptation that comes our way. We love you. Amen.