Tell the Story of the text....
There are a variety of lessons in this text, and I can only cover a few in the allotted time.
1) Homosexuality is a terrible sin The bible houses dozens of cross references to this very unpopular fact in our country.
Romans 1:26-28 "For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper..."
Jude 1:7 "just as Sodom and Gomorra and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire."
Today we have homosexual pastors pastoring homosexuals. We have homosexuals being told that "God made you that way." The first good news I’ve seen in awhile a transsexual man who became a woman through surgery has finally dropped the bid to become a pastor of a Methodist church.
There are forces in nearly every denomination lobbying for homosexuality to be accepted in the church. But as long as I live and breath it will never be accepted here.
The lesson that must be taught is the lesson of the gospel.
**Homosexuality, and sexual impropriety is a sin and __all__ sin demands the death penalty of hell. But God so loved the homosexual, the adulterer and the fornicator that he sent his one and only son so that whoever would believe in him will not perish but instead can have everlasting life."***
The message of the Bible is clear. "Repent and be baptized in the name of Christ."
Choose life must be our battle cry!
2) Living in an unrighteous culture dulls our own sense of righteousness.
When you see verse 8 you cannot help but realize that Lot Himself, a righteous man had been so long in the company of sinners that he was unable to discern good and evil in it’s entirety.
In keeping with Eastern Custom he had the highest responsibility to take care of his guests. That was a form of unwritten law - in a land where hospitality was key to life. But Lot’s righteousness had been spoiled because he lived in close connection with a sin stained society.
Remember Peter says Lot was a righteous man! And Genesis 19:9 gives the idea that he has repeatedly rebuked them for their sin - to no avail!
We also have been made righteous in Christ but we live in a Godless society. This nation under God does not by and large submit to God. Remember that. And pay careful attention to the watchdog groups that do help to guard your righteousness.
It is not impossible to life in godliness and holiness in America, but it is impossible to do so without the aid of other Christians around you. That is the way it has always been in any society, and the way it will always be until the end when Christ comes and sets up an eternally righteous kingdom.
So then, one overriding message in the text is that we lose our ability to know and do rightly when we accept known sin. Lot failed to live up to his duty as a father to his daughters, and later on we see the result of the godless culture on his two daughters who apparently have no qualms about getting their father drunk so they could get pregnant by him! You know they had no guilt because the names they gave these children "Moab" means "of his father" and "Ben-Ammi" means "son of my people". Both names seem to memorialize and flaunt their sin.
Closely related to the second is the third, but there is a difference in relationship the Second was "2) Living IN an unrighteous culture dulls our own sense of righteousness." And the third is ...
3) Being Part of an unrighteous culture decreases our power & witness.
Look at v14, where his sons-in-law wouldn’t listen to his pleas.
Look at 26 where his wife perished
and finally look at verses 30-38 where his daughters commit incest with their own father!
Lot lost his family not just because he moved into sin city, but because he became a part of it and failed to protect his family from it. Earlier in chapter 13, Lot was merely pitching his tents in proximity to Sodom, here he’s sitting in the gates of the city, having bought a house downtown. Recognize of course that, there is no evidence of involvement there - only that he now lived in town.
The evidence for his becoming part of the city is seen in the fact that He had sons-in-law in the city. That means of course that He wasn’t guarding his daughters from godless men, which I believe is the duty of every Christian Father. But instead as a patriarch he was actually accepting these men - who themselves by the testimony of the text was among the crowd of every man in the city who had come to Lot’s door to homosexualy rape his guests!
Surely Lot would have known about these character traits, but somehow he overlooked them. In some ways, his actions indicated that he was part of the culture and that cost him power in his witness.
As Christians we need to learn to walk a very fine line between being in the world and yet not of the world. There is guidance for us in 1 Corinthians 5:9-10 " I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people; I did not at all mean with the immoral people of this world, or with the covetous and swindlers, or with idolaters, for then you would have to go out of the world."
The word "to associate with" means "to mix up together with." We are called as Christians to distance ourselves from godless Christians and yet to actually take up residence among the godless unsaved!
There is no excuse in this text for ivory-tower Christianity - locking ourselves behind closed doors and cowering at the world outside. It’s a challenge to be the salt which preserves a rotting world. To be Light that shines boldly in darkness; piercing the shadows of lies with truth without care for it’s impending attack on upon us.
I learned what it meant to be salt when I worked at Wal-Mart. The break room was always a hotbed for dirty jokes, gossiping and all kinds of garbage, but when I walked into the room people had learned to respect me enough as a dedicated Christian that the room would grow silent.
Some of the Other Christians in the building got the same response and yet others did not. What’s the difference? The ones who got that response took pains to show righteousness in every aspect of their day. The "Christians" who were not met with silence often themselves took part in the barrage.
Are you salt and light at work? Are you salt and light in your society? Our society is a highly sexual society and has lost it’s grip entirely on the moral teachings of the Bible. Sex is now considered a free commodity in our society. And sadly the Christian church, like Lot and His daughters is losing the ability to live morally in this free sex society. Why? Because we’re learning to accept it as the status quo. We watch it on TV and read about it. Pornography is freely available and is often even free on the Internet.
If statistics hold true, it comes through the wires of hundreds of computers in our towns. And there may well be people in this church who go after it themselves. We live in Sodom my friends, and some of us have bought the philosophy around us. We’re losing our witness.
How do we live in a society that flaunts immorality? Ultimately, there is a major question to be put to us in this passage. Are we Impacting our society or being impacted by our society?
In his book titled "For Faith and Family" Dr. Richard Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the SBC, believes while Christian families are under attack like never before, there is hope. "With the Lord’s help, " he says, "we can make a difference starting with ourselves and our families." In the book, Land talks about the damage that pornography and violence in the media can do and how Christians can counteract and insulate themselves from exposure to "this kind of spiritual and emotional toxic waste." But, he says, Christians cannot just "hunker in the bunker" and decide not to be involved and ignore the plight of culture. He says culture will not allow that -- and the only effective thing Christians can do is be obedient to the Lord and go out into the world and make a lasting difference.
Contest it if you will but Lot’s response provides for us a partial model of a good response to a godless society, he corrected them. Look at verse 6-7; it’s verse 8 where he shows his own degradation... Something which mercifully his daughters were spared from, but look here; Genesis 19:6-7 "But Lot went out to them at the doorway, and shut the door behind him, and said, "Please, my brothers, do not act wickedly."
He addressed them with civility, even calling them brothers, he didn’t mount a hateful attack- yet he called wickedness wickedness. We’re losing a fair amount of ground in this country, because we’re too afraid to call sin - "sin". And those that do in the Christian community have forgotten how to speak the truth in love.
I don’t care how unpopular it is to say it, pornography, sexual immorality, homosexuality, adultery, and fornication are sin. Sex is for marriage alone- that’s the way God built it! There are a lot of people messing up their lives, but the good news is that God can and dig them out if they’ll only repent.
4) All is not lost if we’ll look to our fourth lesson in the text. We Can save some in our Godless society by prayer alone - Look at verse 29. It was Abraham’s intercession that made the difference and saved Lot. We’ll see the same in our church today. The Church is week for lack of prayer. The church will thrive with the abundance of it. Our brother’s and sisters may only persevere in their faith by our prayers. (v29)
This is the secret behind Paul’s requests for prayer for himself, and the many encouragement’s we have in the Bible to pray for one another.
5) Fifth and finally, Our Salvation is ours alone - it cannot be granted to our children by inheritance (vv. 30-38).
Lot was able to take his children out of Sodom, but he failed to remove Sodom from his children. I don’t believe this is a failure of Lot to do what he should have done, because there is no way for a parent to save their children.
Friends we can raise them to the best of our ability, we can guard them, protect them, even teach them righteousness, but there is no guarantee of their salvation because you as parents are Christians.
Lot was the one righteous man that God could find in all of the Cities of the plain, Sodom Gomorra and the others. Yet for all his intercession and righteousness he couldn’t save his daughters.
We need a renewed sense of righteousness. We need to ask God to show us sin for what it is. Black and hateful. We need determine how to live as salt and light in the midst of a dying world - we must impact our society and yet cling to one another so that we will not be impacted by society.
We must pray for our neighbors to know Christ - we must speak the truth of the gospel with love and not hatred - which is itself Godlessness. And we must always be mindful men that our families are counting on us to protect them.
