Introduction:
A. Once there was a man who grew watermelons to supplement his meager income.
1. He was doing pretty well, until some local kids began sneaking into his watermelon patch at night to eat his watermelons.
2. After some careful thought, he came up with a clever idea that he thought would scare the kids away for sure.
3. The man made a sign and posted it in the field.
4. The next day, the kids showed up and saw the sign which read, “Warning! One of the watermelons in this field has been injected with cyanide.”
5. The kids decided to make a sign of their own and they posted it next to the man’s sign.
6. When the man surveyed his field the next day, he was pleased to notice that no watermelons had been eaten.
7. He had thought his sign had worked until next to his sign, he saw the sign the kids made which read, “Now there are two!”
B. How seriously do we take warning signs?
1. When you see a warning sign at curve that says 35 MPH, do you slow down to 35 or do you go whatever speed you want?
2. When you see a sign that says, “Danger! Keep Out,” do you go in?
3. When you read a label that says, “Exposure to this could cause cancer,” do you continue to handle and engage with that substance?
4. We will heed the warning signs, if and when we take them seriously.
C. The same is true with God - He has issued many warnings and commands, but do we take the Lord and His commands seriously?
1. In today’s segment from the story of Abraham, we will witness why it is so important to take God seriously and to heed God’s commands and warnings.
2. I love to study and teach God’s Word, but there are certain topics and sections of Scripture that are very challenging and controversial to address.
3. Genesis 19 is certainly one of them – this chapter tells the story of God’s complete destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and some surrounding cities because of the depravity found there.
a. This narrative explains why God reduced an otherwise idyllic valley to a salty pit of rocks and dust, and a sea that to this day cannot sustain life.
4. In this series on the life of Abraham, I would prefer to omit this dark chapter, after all, Abraham is not the central character in this part of the story.
a. But I am compelled to address this chapter, because our all-wise and all-knowing God included it and preserved it in Scripture.
5. While Abraham isn’t the central person in the narrative, the events took place just 20 miles east of his camp and helped define his character.
a. As we wrestle with what happened with Lot and Sodom and Gomorrah, we learn more about Abraham and the God he worshiped and journeyed with.
D. When we last saw Abraham, he was interceding on behalf of the city of Sodom where his nephew Lot lived.
1. The two angels who accompanied the Lord on His visit to Abraham have gone down into the valley to carry out His judgment on the cities there.
2. Today, we pick up the story as the two angels come into Sodom in the evening hours.
3. They enter in the guise of ordinary men – they do not have any features that distinguish them as supernatural beings.
I. The Story
A. Genesis 19 begins: 1 The two angels arrived at Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gateway of the city. When he saw them, he got up to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground. 2 “My lords,” he said, “please turn aside to your servant’s house. You can wash your feet and spend the night and then go on your way early in the morning.” “No,” they answered, “we will spend the night in the square.” 3 But he insisted so strongly that they did go with him and entered his house. He prepared a meal for them, baking bread without yeast, and they ate. (19:1-3)
1. Verse 1 tells us that Lot was sitting at the gateway of the city.
a. This phrase does not mean that Lot was passing the time of day at the city gate, just being a people watcher.
b. Rather, this Middle Eastern expression is a technical phrase that means that Lot was the chief magistrate of the city of Sodom.
c. His job was not only to give an official welcome to visitors of the city, like a Walmart greeter, but his job was also to investigate the nature of strangers who might arrive.
d. It was also his job to administer justice concerning any disputes within the city.
e. Lot carried out duties that were much like those of a mayor or justice of the peace.
2. So we see that Lot had not only pitched his tents near Sodom, he had moved into Sodom, and had risen to a position of distinction and authority in the Sodom society.
3. Unfortunately, as we will later see, Lot has lost sight of basic spiritual principles and that there was more of Sodom in Lot than Lot in Sodom.
a. The city had infected the man more than the man had affected the city.
4. Immediately, we notice that Lot offered hospitality to these two visitors.
a. They are content to camp out in the square, but Lot insists that they stay with him, and for good reason as we will see in a minute.
b. We talked last week about the importance of hospitality in that ancient time and our need to make hospitality an important and impactful ministry of the church.
5. Lot’s gracious hospitality became the scene of an unthinkable and unimaginable display of societal debauchery.
B. The story continues: 4 Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom-both young and old-surrounded the house. 5 They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.”
6 Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him 7 and said, “No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing. 8 Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don't do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.”
9 “Get out of our way," they replied. And they said, “This fellow came here as an alien, and now he wants to play the judge! We’ll treat you worse than them.” They kept bringing pressure on Lot and moved forward to break down the door.
10 But the men inside reached out and pulled Lot back into the house and shut the door. 11 Then they struck the men who were at the door of the house, young and old, with blindness so that they could not find the door. (Gen. 19:4-11)
1. There is so much that is shocking and disturbing about this scene!
2. It is hard to imagine a community so corrupt and depraved that the entire population would approve of homosexual gang rape against guests within the city walls.
3. It is even harder for me to imagine a father deciding to protect the strangers who are guests in his house by offering his virgin daughters as sex objects to pacify a group of lustful men.
a.
4. All of this points to the utter depravity of Sodom and also how much Sodom had rubbed off on Lot and his family.
a. By that, I don’t mean that Lot approved of the evils that were commonplace in Sodom.
b. The Apostle Peter wrote: 7 and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the filthy lives of lawless men 8 (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard). (2 Pt. 2:7-8)
c. Although Lot did not approve of the evil around him and was tormented by it, he still chose to live in the middle of it and was not completely immune from its effects.
5. Can you imagine how frightened Lot must have been at this moment with this gang breaking down his door?
6. The scene threatened to get completely out of control until Lot’s guests used their god-given powers to blind the men who sought to inflict this evil advance on Lot and his guests.
C. The story continues: 12 The two men said to Lot, “Do you have anyone else here-sons-in-law, sons or daughters, or anyone else in the city who belongs to you? Get them out of here, 13 because we are going to destroy this place. The outcry to the LORD against its people is so great that he has sent us to destroy it.”
14 So Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who were pledged to marry his daughters. He said, “Hurry and get out of this place, because the LORD is about to destroy the city!” But his sons-in-law thought he was joking.
15 With the coming of dawn, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Hurry! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be swept away when the city is punished.”
16 When he hesitated, the men grasped his hand and the hands of his wife and of his two daughters and led them safely out of the city, for the LORD was merciful to them. 17 As soon as they had brought them out, one of them said, “Flee for your lives! Don’t look back, and don’t stop anywhere in the plain! Flee to the mountains or you will be swept away!”
18 But Lot said to them, “No, my lords, please! 19 Your servant has found favor in your eyes, and you have shown great kindness to me in sparing my life. But I can’t flee to the mountains; this disaster will overtake me, and I’ll die. 20 Look, here is a town near enough to run to, and it is small. Let me flee to it - it is very small, is’t it? Then my life will be spared.”
21 He said to him, “Very well, I will grant this request too; I will not overthrow the town you speak of. 22 But flee there quickly, because I cannot do anything until you reach it.” (That is why the town was called Zoar.) (Gen. 19:12-22)
1. Can you imagine what Lot must have thought when the angels told him that God had sent them to destroy the city and that Lot needed to get his people out of there?
a. Some have experienced having had to flee their homes suddenly as flood waters rose, or hurricanes descended, or the flames of fire grew out of control.
b. In that moment people must think, “What can I grab that is precious to me?”
c. They must look around and think, “I may never see this place again or live here again.”
2. On top of the tragedy of losing everything Lot had worked hard to build, he was struck with the reality that he had not been able to influence anyone in God’s direction.
a. Abraham had pleaded with God for mercy for the city, and God had promised to spare the city for the sake of only 10 righteous people, but 10 righteous could not be found.
b. In fact, there weren’t even 5 or 6, even the young men who were engaged to his two daughters were scoffers and unbelievers like the rest of the people in the city.
3. The narrator doesn’t tell us Lot’s reason for delaying so much, but perhaps Lot didn’t take the threat seriously – consider how hard it would be to adjust to a sudden announcement of immediate destruction.
a. When Lot and his family continued to delay, the angels dragged them out of the city.
b. It is also hard to understand Lot’s reluctance to run to the hills.
c. If God told me He was about to destroy this building or this city, and He outlined an escape route with a specific place to run, then I think I would immediately run to where He commanded – what about you?
d. I don’t know why he didn’t think he could out run the destruction and asked to go to Zoar.
e. Some have speculated that that he was reluctant to leave the comfort of the city for a return to the outdoor existence of a nomad.
f. One scholar said, “It almost taxes the reader’s patience to bear with this long-winded plea at a moment of such extreme danger. Lot appreciated but little what was being done for him.” (H.C. Leupold)
4. The angels patiently and graciously acquiesced to Lot’s request.
D. The story continues: 23 By the time Lot reached Zoar, the sun had risen over the land. 24 Then the LORD rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah-from the LORD out of the heavens. 25 Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, including all those living in the cities-and also the vegetation in the land. 26 But Lot's wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.
27 Early the next morning Abraham got up and returned to the place where he had stood before the LORD. 28 He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, toward all the land of the plain, and he saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace.
29 So when God destroyed the cities of the plain, he remembered Abraham, and he brought Lot out of the catastrophe that overthrew the cities where Lot had lived. (Gen. 19:23-29)
1. Lot and family fled in the wee hours of the night and made their way to Zoar as the sun arose.
a. As they approached Zoar, Lot’s wife couldn’t resist a longing glance over her shoulder toward Sodom.
b. The angels had dragged her to the city limits and urged her to flee across the plain, but her heart remained in the doomed city, and she doomed herself with that backward glance.
c. Later, Jesus used her death to illustrate the spiritual principle that the world is temporary, but God’s Kingdom is forever – Jesus said, “Remember Lot's wife! Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.” (Lk. 17:32-33)
2. When God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah and the other cities of the plain, that region of the lush Jordon River valley sank into the giant hole that is the southern end of the Dead Sea of today.
a. It is now literally the lowest place on earth at 1,400 feet below sea level, with the Dead Sea plunging another 1,200 feet to the bottom.
b. People wonder what process or power God used to inflict this kind of devastation.
c. Some suggest a volcanic eruption, but no evidence points in this direction and there are no lava remains in the area.
d. Some suggest that the “fire” which rained down from heaven was lightening.
e. Others suggest that there was a huge explosion of highly inflammable materials, including sulfur which may have been deposited in the ground – we are told that there were tar pits in Gen. 14:10 – the explosion may have cast these materials into the air so that they rained down upon these cities.
3. We don’t know what process God used, but we know that the event was so dramatic that Abraham witnessed glowing plumes of smoke from his camp in the mountains, 20 miles away.
a. Abraham must have feared that Lot and his family were dead - Abraham knew God had found fewer than 10 righteous people and so destroyed the ungodly cities.
b. What an ugly and tragic scene this is, and yet God showed grace to Lot and his family.
4. Later we see Lot’s daughters get themselves pregnant through their father, and wonder if they feared that the rest of the world had come to an end and they were the sole survivors.
II. Application
A. What lessons can we learn from this episode in Abraham’s journey of faith?
1. I want to drive home one primary point today that I learn from our study, and the point is: God must be taken seriously.
B. A. W. Tozer wrote: “What comes to mind when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”
1. What comes to mind when you and I think about God?
2. A good place to start is to examine God’s attributes, His defining characteristics.
a. What is God like?
b. What do God’s actions reveal about His abilities, His values, and His character?
3. Scripture reveals that God is eternal, infinite, immeasurable, all knowing and all powerful.
a. Scripture repeatedly describes God as a God of love.
b. God’s love is seen in His goodness and mercy, kindness and wisdom, and compassion and patience.
c. God is holy and righteous. God is sovereign and He never changes.
4. All of those things are true, but the list is incomplete.
a. Most people would agree with those characteristics, but many would stop there.
b. It is easy for us to overlook the quality of divine justice.
c. We prefer to avoid the theological principle that God’s tolerance and patience have a limit.
d. Truth is: God’s mercy comes with an expiration date.
e. There are occasions when God says, “That’s enough. That’s it. No more!”
5. God said, “No more” in Genesis 6, when He expressed sorrow for ever having made humanity and He later brought the great flood.
a. In His grace, however, God saved Noah and his family.
6. God said, “No more” in Genesis 11, when humans in their pride became obsessed with building a monument to themselves, and so God thwarted the construction of the tower of Babel.
7. God said, “No more” in Daniel 5, when Belshazzar profaned God in a debauched feast celebrating false gods, and the Lord caused the city of Babylon to fall.
C. God’s mercy has limits because His justice demands satisfaction.
1. If evil is never held accountable, if sin is never punished, then God would not be just.
2. If the Lord established rules and then ever enforced them, what purpose would the rules serve?
3. God established a moral code – an objective standard of right and wrong – and it was and is for our own good.
4. God’s laws, when obeyed, make life better for everyone.
5. When people break God’s laws, then both they and others suffer.
D. In Genesis 19, God said, “No more!”
1. Abraham had pleaded for God to withhold His wrath if He found 10 righteous people among the immoral ones.
2. Abraham hoped that would spare Lot and his family.
3. God chose to deny Abraham’s specific request, yet the Lord honored Abraham’s motive by sending angels to evacuate Lot’s household before destroying the city.
E. Taking God seriously wasn’t just something for Abraham’s day, it is something we must do today!
1. The wrath of God’s justice is too unsettling for many of us to think about.
2. Many of us prefer to imagine God as a kindly old grandfather with fluffy white whiskers and a reassuring smile.
3. But we may do that to our own detriment, for the biblical picture of God in both the OT and NT is One who must be taken seriously.
4. The New Testament is full of warnings and reminders not to toy with God or with faith.
5. The time when God will say, “No more” can come in an instant.
a. Jesus, the Son of God, our Lord and Savior, will appear in the clouds and will bring this age of grace to a fearsome and immediate conclusion.
1. Jesus taught: “It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the second or third watch of the night. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.” (Luke 12:38-40)
b. Beyond the coming of Jesus, we must keep in mind that any one of us could die today or tonight and stand before Him to whom we must give an account for our lives.
1. Jesus told a sobering parable about the rich man who decided to build bigger barns to store his riches.
2. The man said to himself: “This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I’ll say to myself, ‘You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.’ ” But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?” This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God. (Luke 12:18-21)
F. As we seek to take God seriously, let me suggest that we focus on three things to keep in mind.
1. First, Let’s keep in mind that God is still a God of holiness and He must be taken seriously.
a. God is holy. He is morally pure, unblemished by any wrongdoing, and free from impure motives.
b. And because God is holy, He wants us to be holy, just like Him – which leads to the second thing to keep in mind.
2. Second, Let’s keep in mind that we are still creatures of immorality, and we must take sin seriously.
a. Truth is: every single one of us is a sinner. We are unholy and unrighteous.
b. We battle and struggle against sin – but that is something we must continue to do – we must battle and struggle against it.
c. We must not give in to sin and decide to live in sin.
d. We must not be fooled into taking sin lightly – if it is wrong, then it is a big deal.
e. If it has become a habitual wrong, then it’s a bigger deal.
f. Like Lot and Sodom, we have to ask ourselves what sins do we tolerate? What evil have we rationalized?
g. Our society has embraced many sins, like greed, selfishness, lust and homosexuality, but we must not join them in embracing and condoning any sin.
h. The Hebrew writer reminds us: If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. (Heb. 10:26-27)
3. Finally, Let’s keep in mind that we are still at the mercy of God’s grace, and we must take grace seriously.
a. Like foolish, deluded Lot, we do not deserve mercy and we’re slow to respond when God sends us signs and messengers to lead us out of danger.
b. We must never take advantage of God’s grace and patience.
c. We must never presume that we will get another chance or another day to make it right.
d. Our personal day of Judgment could come at any moment.
e. Let’s remember Lot and take God up on His offer to rescue us.
f. And let’s remember Lot’s wife and never look back.
Resources:
Abraham – One Nomad’s Amazing Journey of Faith, by Charles Swindoll, Tyndale, 2014.
Friend of God – The Legacy of Abraham, Man of Faith, by Ray Stedman, Discovery House, 2010.
