There is an old story of an eagle who, on an early morning during the Spring thaw, soared high above the forest looking for something to eat.
As he followed the course of a river he looked down and spied a small rodent, trapped on a piece of ice that had broken free and was floating down stream.
Seeing an easy meal, he swooped down, landed on the ice, killed the mouse and began to eat.
As he continued his meal, he saw that his perch was rapidly approaching a water fall, but determined to finish eating and thinking he would rise into the air and to safety at the last moment, continued his course.
As the ice neared the falls, the eagle finished his last bite. Satisfied with his breakfast he spread his mighty wings and attempted to rise skyward as the chunk of ice tipped over the edge.
While enjoying his meal however, he had failed to notice that the warmth of his feet had caused his claws to become embedded in the ice. Try as he might, he could not dislodge them and free himself from what had now become the burden that would carry him to his death on the rocks far below.
By the time we come to Genesis 19 and the account of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, we have already been given a picture in Lot, of a man who, although he believes in God (Peter calls him ‘righteous Lot’), has chosen the morsels of worldly pleasure and comfort and has found himself embedded in the ice of faithlessness and worldly thinking.
We haven’t time to read all of chapters 13 through 19, so let me give you a synopsis to catch you up.
Abraham and Lot, both wealthy men, separate their herds according to Abraham’s wisdom because things are getting a little crowded in the pastures and the herdsmen are fighting over the grass.
Abraham, a Godly man who puts the needs of others before his own, graciously invites Lot to take first choice of the land, and Lot grabs the lush green grasslands in the Valley of the Jordan.
The bible tells us that he moved his tents as far as Sodom, (a city already widely-known for its debauchery and wickedness), and eventually finds himself sitting in the city gates; the place where business was transacted and philosophies discussed.
Abraham, on the other hand, having received God’s promise that he would inherit all the land and that his descendants would possess it forever, pitches his tents under the oaks of Mamre where he builds an altar to the Lord.
The writer to the Hebrews tells us that BY FAITH Abraham lived as an alien in the land of promise...for he was looking for a city whose architect and builder is God.
I doubt that it could be said of Lot, “By faith he sat in the gates of Sodom”
That is a lesson for us today, believer. Do you ever wonder about a decision, in business or otherwise, and say “I wonder if the Lord will bless this decision”? Well, you may first ask yourself, “Am I doing this by faith?”
For “Whatever is not of faith is sin” and “Without faith it is impossible to please Him”.
Lot, seeking the good things of the world, turned his back on the good things of God...for we cannot have both. When we cling to the world we cannot cling to God, and when we cling to God, we stop wanting the things of the world.
Lot, we read in II Peter, found his soul oppressed by the wickedness of Sodom, yet there he sat. Eventually we find him and his family and his goods all taken captive and dragged away by invading forces, and he has to be saved by courageous and Godly Abraham, who takes Lot back from four kings and their armies, with only 318 men.
Man of business, modern woman in the workplace, being a believer in Christ, do you find your soul vexed (oppressed) by what you see around you, yet keep your seat in the wheel of commerce by employing many of their philosophies and tactics for the sake of competing and keeping up? I pray that in your circle of Christian friends, there is an “Abraham” who will intercede for you in your weakness. Someone who will be bold enough to bargain with God for your well-being, and keep themselves enough removed from the world that they can spiritually discern your precarious place and fight for you when you are taken captive by deceit and greed and worldly reasoning.
As we come to chapter 19 I want you to note that chapter 18 ends with Abraham’s pleading with the Lord to spare Sodom. Yes, he was praying for the entire city, not only for Lot. A Godly man prays for the ungodly, because he knows that God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. This is the Spirit of Christ.
In the gospels, when a village in Samaria rejected Jesus, John and James wanted to call down fire from heaven to consume the village. They did not yet have the Spirit of Christ. But here is this Old Testament saint, pleading with God to spare them all, even if only 5 righteous can be found.
But even in his goodness he wasn’t as good as our Lord, Who, though there was no one righteous, no, not one, died once for ALL. And if ALL would believe, ALL would be saved.
Notice also that the Lord visited with Abraham face to face, but only sent His angels to Lot, and not for a friendly visit, full of promises and blessing, but only to drag him to safety at Abraham’s request.
Let’s read verses 1-29 of Genesis 19, to have the details of the account fresh in our minds before we go on. (Read)
I want to remind you here, that in Lot we see a type of the believer who has a form of religion but neglects relationship. He forgets the Lord’s admonitions to draw near to Him, to consider Him, to seek His face, to know His ways. In Abraham, is the type of the believer who seeks God for Himself, not for His blessings or the things He can give, not thinking that knowing God somehow gives us magic mouths with which we can claim what we want in our childish greed and receive it because ‘daddy’ is rich, and not satisfied that we are good because we have religion and that therefore God winks at our secret sins and is compelled by our mental ascent to His presence to bless our worldly endeavors. Abraham is the type of the Christian who receives the promises of God through faith, because he sees himself as a pilgrim in this world, and by faith endures as seeing Him Who is unseen.
Keep these types in mind, as we talk about Lot.
First, see in Lot that when the angels came to Sodom he was sitting in the gate of the city. It was evening. The time of day when a man of God with a family should have been attentive to his family and their needs.
In the second chapter of Ecclesiastes the preacher writes of all his efforts and their ultimate vanity. I will not take time to read these lines from verse 4 through 11, but I will highlight them for you, and I would encourage you to look them up and read them in full later.
He writes:
“I enlarged my works” vs 4
“I made gardens and parks for MYSELF” vs 5
“I made ponds of water for MYSELF” vs 6
“I collected for MYSELF silver and gold” vs 8
“Then I became great and increased...” vs 9
“My heart was pleased because of all my labor” vs 10
and hear verse 11
“Thus I considered all my activities which my hands had done and the labor which I had exerted, and behold all was vanity and striving after wind and there was no profit under the sun.”
The day of business was done. The daily opportunity for seeking profit and success was over. It was evening.
Folks, there is a time, even for the believer, to work and provide for his family. When it is done in faith, trusting that all good things ultimately come from God, and that it is God from whom promotion comes, then that work will be blessed.
But how many believers even in our day, even in this church, live in such a fear of lack that they forget that He said, “take no thought for tomorrow”; they pay no mind to the apostle’s admonition to “be content with what you have” and at the expense of their families and their own health, work into the night to pile up that which is passing away...that which they cannot keep?
It was evening, and Lot was sitting in the city gate. Now there is indication that he recognized the angels for who they were, because it says he greeted them with his face to the ground (bowing). Perhaps he only saw them as strangers and knew what kind of vulgar reception they would get from the revelers in the street and wanted to save them from any confrontations. That’s more than I know.
But it amazes me that the angels chose rather to spend the night in the city square, than to enter the house of Lot. What a rebuke! That is a testimony in itself to his condition of heart, that needs no further comment.
He pleads with them however, until they submit to his requests and enter his house where he feeds them and offers them a place to rest.
Before they lay down though, the men of the city surround the house, the old ones and the young ones, and this they shout to Lot: “WHERE ARE THE MEN WHO CAME TO YOU TONIGHT? BRING THEM OUT TO US THAT WE MAY HAVE RELATIONS WITH THEM.”
How can anyone...ANYONE...any thinking person...especially those of the church of God, attempt to justify or condone or plead the cause of homosexuality, in the face of clear and obvious scriptural evidence that the homosexual act is an abomination to God? It astounds me, that men of the clergy in our own generation, have used the sacred desk to preach the lie that God Himself is accepting of those who, in scripture, He turned to ash for the very same sin!
Of COURSE salvation is available to the homosexual, as well as anyone else! But the scripture clearly calls for repentance, and turning from the deliberate practice of sin.
God wants to save so that He can heal...and by His Spirit, conform us to the image of His Son. Not so we can conform God to our image. Blasphemous heresy!
So weakened was Lot, by his wallowing in worldly things and the neglect of true worship and pursuit of the things of God, that in response to their evil request he offers to throw his own precious virgin daughters to the groping, drooling mob, under the pretense of being a good host!
AND EVEN CALLS THEM ‘BROTHERS’!
Well folks, here I will give you a taste of how even an evil, unbelieving world sees the nominal Christian. Are they accepting of him because he isn’t ‘preachy’? Do they admire him because he sometimes stands by his convictions and holds back from the basest of sin (although apparently finding some sin ok as long as it is small)?
No. It says, “This one came in as an alien, and already he is acting like a judge”...and threatened to treat him worse than the plans they had for the visitors.
Christian friends, unbelievers may not have spiritual discernment, because they are spiritually dead; but they can sure recognize a hypocrite when they see one, and they LOVE to point it out.
Do you offer pious praise and worship to God on Sunday, but keep one foot in the world the rest of the week so as not to seem too different? Too much removed? Too religious? Well take care; because the day will come when they will expect you to go a step farther than your conscience will let you, and they will press hard against you, and you will be crying out for grace and strength from a God you hardly know!
The angels come to Lot’s rescue, again, because that is what they were sent to do. They strike the men of the city with blindness to match their spiritual condition, and while they wear themselves out, bumping into each other and trying to find the doorway, the angels take control of the situation.
“Whom else have you here? A son-in-law, and your sons, and your daughters, and whomever you have in the city, bring them out of the place...” and they tell Lot the whole plan.
Observe please, the testimony of the one who has spent so much time in the city gate, in the pursuit of wealth and prestige.
He goes to his sons-in-law, who were to marry his daughters and warns them of the coming destruction, and
“...he appeared to his sons-in-law to be jesting”
People, we have a message much like Lot’s message. The gospel truth and the availability of salvation for all who believe is vital. We must tell it as often as God gives us opportunity. But there is another message that people in our day need to hear. The end is coming! Jesus IS coming back, and the day of the destruction of the unbelieving is around the bend. If they will not believe, let it be because they refuse to surrender to the truth and to God, not because our lifestyle and our witness are such a joke to them that they put no credence in our words!
You will see in this account that in the end, only Lot and his wife and daughters escaped the initial outpouring of God’s wrath. The sons-in-law didn’t go, BECAUSE THEY THOUGHT LOT WAS JOKING.
Oh, Lord, do whatever you have to do in us, whatever changes you have to make, whatever depths you have to let us sink to so that we’ll cry out to you in repentance and rise up true men of God, so that those who are perishing, whether they choose to believe or not, will at least know that we are sincere in our warnings.
Well Lot was weak and his testimony was weak, and he was also unwilling.
So unwilling was he to release his grip on worldly comforts and the things he had acquired for himself, that he hesitated when the angles urged him to gather his family and run from the destruction.
The angles had to literally take his hand, and the hands of his wife and daughters and drag them out of the city.
Then, once they were outside, and the angels exhorted them to escape; to run for their lives; to go to the mountain where they would be far from harm, LOT WAS STILL UNWILLING TO HEED THE WARNINGS AND GO!
(Read verses 18-20)
Christians, we are exhorted to come to the mountain of our Lord. He calls us to draw near where there is safety and sweet communion in His presence.
When He delivers you from your own folly; when He intercedes to save you from some course of disaster that you’ve been following, do you go to Him and in obedience to His Word come out from among them and be separate? Or do you simply pitch your tent in another corner of self and go on...business as usual...until the next time?
Lot did go to Zoar. The Lord will let you go to Zoar too, if you insist. But did Lot find rest in Zoar? Did he find peace and safety? Was he able to look back confidently at his own decision and say “I chose rightly for myself; I didn’t need God’s help”? No. Verse 30 tells us that he
later became afraid in Zoar and finally went to the mountain.
People, there is a time to obey the Lord’s will. It is when He says to do it. Obedience to God in faith that His Word is true and that He knows what is best for us is the kind of faith He honors. Run to Him. He calls, and He beckons you to safety in Him; on His holy mountain.
But ignoring His call and going later, only because you are afraid of the consequences of your own choices is not faith. You won’t find safety in the arms of a God you reject until the time is convenient for YOU.
Lot was unwilling to heed the angel’s warning and obey the Lord’s command, and his unwillingness only led to some unwise choices, the results of which reached out to generations still far off.
He finally chose to go to the mountain, not in obedience but in fear, and there he generated through his own daughters, the Moabites and the Ammonites, who later plagued Israel as nation against nation. The Ammonites were worshipers of Molech, and sacrificed their own infant children on his fires.
Folks, when we are weak in our relationship with God, we will find ourselves unwilling to heed the warnings of scripture and run to Him for His strength; and in the end we will find ourselves making the unwise choices that can end in consequences that will affect generations after us.
Take a lesson from Lot.
But take a better lesson from Abraham.
“By faith he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise; for HE WAS LOOKING FOR THE CITY WHICH HAS FOUNDATIONS, WHOSE ARCHITECT AND BUILDER IS GOD.”
Abraham believed God, and was declared righteous because of his faith.
Abraham separated himself from things of this world that might entice him to sin against his God; he dwelt far apart from those things, and there he built an altar to his God.
Abraham had a face to face relationship to the Lord and was able, in the Lord’s strength, to intercede for others, and obtain the goodness of God for others because of his own devotion and his Christ-like spirit.
Abraham believed God and received the promises.
Lot is only mentioned 5 times in the New Testament, while Abraham is mentioned no less than 73 times.
We are never exhorted to imitate Lot. We are only told that his righteous soul was vexed.
But at the end of a long list of the faithful, in which Abraham receives prominent mention, we are given this exhortation:
“Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance, and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
We are saved by the same kind of faith that Abraham had; the kind that believes God calls into being that which is not, and gives life to the dead.
We come to Him in repentance, believing that Christ shed His blood and died for us and rose again to give us life, and the Bible says that through that faith God declares us Right with Him.
So let’s continue to imitate the faith of Abraham; being willing to move out at God’s command and go where He wants us to go...whether it be physically or in our business or in our spiritual growth and our relationship to Him...interceding for others with a Christ-like spirit; putting the needs of others before our own, building an altar to Him in our hearts and going there often for refreshing and for strength to endure and orders for the coming day and to receive promises for our future.
We needn’t live a weak, unwilling, unwise existence Christian. Through faith and obedience we can walk now in the victory that was won for us on Calvary’s cross.
“And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope until the end, that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.”
