Captive To Sin (Pt. 2)

July 29, 2001 Genesis 14

¡§Captive to sin¡¨ pt. 2

INTRODUCTION

The Arizona highway patrol were mystified when they came upon a pile of smoldering wreckage embedded in the side of a cliff rising above the road at the apex of a curve. The metal debris resembled the site of an airplane crash, but it turned out to be the vaporized remains of an automobile. The make of the vehicle was unidentifiable at the scene.

The folks in the lab finally figured out what it was, and pieced together the events that led up to its demise.

It seems that a former Air Force sergeant had somehow got hold of a Jet-Assisted Take-Off unit. JATO units are solid-fuel rockets used to give heavy military transport airplanes an extra push for takeoff from short airfields. The sergeant took the JATO unit into the Arizona desert and found a long, straight stretch of road. He attached the JATO unit to his car, jumped in, accelerated to a high speed, and fired off the rocket.

The facts, as best as could be determined, are as follows:

The operator was driving a 1967 Chevy Impala. He ignited the JATO unit approximately 3.9 miles from the crash site. This was established by the location of a prominently scorched and melted strip of asphalt. The vehicle quickly reached a speed of between 250 and 300 miles per hour and continued at that speed, under full power, for an additional twenty to twenty-five seconds. The soon-to-be pilot experienced G-forces usually reserved for dog-fighting F-14 jocks under full afterburners.

The Chevy remained on the striaght highway for approximately 2.6 miles (15 to 20 seconds) before the driver applied the brakes, completely melting them, blowing the tires, and leaving thick rubber marks on the road surface. The vehicle then became airborne for an additional 1.3 miles, impacted the cliff face at a height of 125 feet, and left a blackened crater three feet deep in the rock.

Most of the diver¡¦s remains were not recovered; however, small fragments of bone, teeth, and hair were extracted from the crater, and fingernail and bone shards were removed from a piece of debris believed to be a portion of the steering wheel.

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

By that, I don¡¦t mean that Lot was someone who lived a good life. Everything that we know about Lot speaks of the fact that he cared only for himself. He took the opportunity to get the best of his uncle Abram, who had been like a father to him. He put his family into jeopardy in order to be in a place where he could achieve financial and political power. He did not follow God¡¦s law in his own life, and was certainly not going to declare God¡¦s truth to someone else for fear of losing some opportunity to profit financially from his relationship with this person.

The only sense in which Lot was righteous was in that fact that he had, at some point in his past, established a relationship with God. He had placed his faith in God as the truth-teller, the creator of the universe and the only one who could forgive him of his sins. He was what we would call today, a Christian. And he was like many Christians today. He was on his way to heaven, but he was making the most out of sin while he was here on earth.

2. Lot was a carnal man. (1 Cor. 3:1-3)

Lot had never grown up in his faith in God. He had gotten to a certain point, and then something had stunted his growth. He was a spiritual dwarf. He had his minds on things of the world rather than on spiritual things. He was like a spiritual baby whose only concern was where his next meal was going to come from and who was going to clean up all the messes that he made.

3. Lot was a troubled man. (2 Peter 2:8)

Because Lot had a righteous soul but was living in sin, he was miserable. He was trying to have the best of two worlds. That prevented him from being able to enjoy either one. He felt all twisted inside. He had a continual knot in his stomach that just would not go away no matter how he tried to get rid of it.

A man was looking out his window one day, and he noticed a group of birds sitting on a high-tension electrical cable near his house. He knew that there was a huge amount of voltage going through that cable, and yet the birds felt no ill-effects to sitting there. He wondered what would happen if he reached up there and grabbed hold of that cable. Before he had a chance to try out his little experiment, he remembered something that he had learned back in high-school. The reason that the birds were not hurt was because they were touching nothing but the cable. He, on the other hand, could not reach the cable without being connected to something else that was touching the ground. The reason that the electricity would hurt him is because he was trying to grab hold of something high in the sky without letting go of his world below.