Captive To Sin"

But the fact of the matter is that you and all of these people that I have mentioned may be telling the absolute truth when they say that they are Christians. They may very well be on their way to heaven. How can I make such a bold statement? Because of the story of a man in the Bible whose name is Lot.

How can people live in circumstances that are completely opposed to the will of God and see the contradiction? How could Lot live in Sodom? Was he an unrighteous man who didn’t care about God? How do we get ourselves into situations like the one Lot found himself in, in Genesis 14?

This morning, I want us to see several descriptions of Lot found in the Bible. As we look at Lot, ask yourself if these descriptions of Lot describe you.

1. Lot was a righteous man. (2 Peter 2:7-8)

Of all the descriptions that we are going to look at this morning, this is the one that makes the least sense – the one that doesn’t seem to fit. The event that happened in his life in Genesis 13 that we looked at last week seems to give evidence to just the opposite. In fact, everything that we know about Lot would seem to give evidence to the fact that he was nothing but a wicked man, who was concerned only for his own self-interest and who ended up destroying himself and his family through his refusal of God’s direction in his life.

If it wasn’t for two verses in the book of 2 Peter, we would be safe in saying that we will never see Lot again because he is dwelling in hell today. But the Bible gives us a different picture of Lot. Look at 2 Peter 2:7-8. [read them emphasizing “righteous Lot” [“just Lot” in KJV] (2:7), “that righteous man” and “righteous soul”(2:8)] How could God call Lot “righteous” which is the Old Testament equivalent of calling him a “Christian”? I doubt that his character matches any of the descriptions for a Christian that you wrote down a few moments ago.

Lot, perhaps better than anyone else in the Bible, illustrates the fact that our righteousness before God is a gift that we receive because of our faith. It is not something that we earn through our works prior to salvation, nor is it something that we maintain through our works after salvation. I cannot earn a right standing before God. It is His gift to me based on my faith in what He says to be true. It is impossible for us to “be good”. The Bible says that there is none righteous, no not one. (Rom 3)

Lot also illustrates that once a person comes to God for salvation and is made righteous, he will never lose that righteous standing no matter what happens. Lot messed up big time, but God still claimed him as one of his own. My son may roll around in the mud and get so dirty that in my mind, I am embarrassed to call him my own. But no matter what, my son will always be my son. I will always claim him as my own.

At some point in Lot’s life, he had placed his faith in God for his means of forgiveness and salvation. But something had happened, or better put, something had failed to happen which meant that Lot never changed from the person that he was. He was righteous in his standing before God, but he was wicked in his lifestyle. He had been born again, but he had never grown up.