All right, if you would open
your Bibles to the book of Genesis, chapter 19. I'll be doing a little extra
sniffing today. My allergy pill is not effective against whatever's
bothering it now. And I even took a second one
of a different kind. So, uh, just going to have to do a little
sniffing. Genesis chapter 19, we'll begin
reading at verse 15. With the coming of dawn, the
angels urged Lot saying, hurry and get out of this place because
the Lord is about to destroy the city. But his son's-in-law, I'm sorry, my eyes shifted. We'll start again with verse
15. I started at 14. 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.
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. As soon as he had brought
them out, or they had been brought out, one of them said, flee for
your lives, do not look back, and do not stop anywhere in the
plain. Flee to the mountains, or you
will be swept away. But Lot said to them, no, my
lords, please. 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. Look, here is a
town near enough to run to and it is small. Let me flee to it. It is very small, isn't it? Then
my life will be spared. He said to him, very well, I
will grant this request too. I will not overthrow the town
you speak of, but flee there quickly because I cannot do anything
until you reach it. That is why the town was called
Zoar. Now, we don't have to scratch
our heads. about what the story of Lot and
the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and other cities in
that plain of the Jordan River, we don't have to scratch our
heads trying to figure out what it's about or what we should
gain from it. It's made very clear, if you'll
turn with me over to 2 Peter chapter 2. 2 Peter chapter 2, and we'll begin
reading in verse 4. For if God did not spare angels
when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them into gloomy
dungeons to be held for judgment, if he did not spare the ancient
world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected
Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others, if he condemned
the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes and
made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly,
and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the
filthy lives of lawless men, for that righteous man living
among them day after day was tormented in his righteous soul
by the lawless deeds he saw and heard. If this is so, then the
Lord knows how to rescue godly men from trials and to hold the
unrighteous for the day of judgment while continuing their punishment. This is especially true of those
who follow the corrupt desire of the sinful nature, that is
the flesh, and despise authority. And so here we have on the authority
of an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ what this story is really
about. Now, many approach the book of
Genesis or, well, the entire Old Testament, and learn its
history as though the teaching of the history is the point. No. The history is a method. It's not the end. You may learn
all the history from Genesis 1-1 to the end of the book of
Malachi, You may be able to organize everything into chronological
order and name all the kings of both Israel and Judah and
all their wars. You may be able to describe the
time that they spent in Egypt, all of that, and totally miss
the meaning, the purpose for which these stories were written. They were not written to satisfy
our historical curiosity. If so, it would be a lot bigger.
For example, I'd love to know more about Melchizedek. The Bible
says so little about him. And because it says so little
about him, people make up a whole lot about him. But I'm just curious. I'd like to know who was this
Melchizedek and whatever became of him. But again, It's not important
that we know that information. What we needed to know about
the historical figure Melchizedek was told to us in order that
it might be used later on by the writer of Hebrews to teach
us about the nature of the priesthood of the Lord Jesus Christ. He's
not talked about for any other reason. And all those kings,
David included, Their life stories are told to us, not so that we
may be able to come up with a chronological timeline of what happened to
Israel, God's chosen national people. All of these things are
told to us to teach us about Christ and the gospel that came
by him. And if we don't use it that way,
we're misusing it. So we look at this story in Genesis
chapter 19 and Peter tells us what that story is about. You
see, we live in a world that has been condemned to destruction.
A world like the city of Sodom. And sometimes we wonder why it
hasn't been destroyed yet. We are grieved by the wickedness
of this world. And we're most grieved by how
much of the world's wickedness we can find in ourselves. We see the birth pains of judgment,
even in our own nation. And we may wonder how we will
fare when God judges this world for the final time. Now, God
brings judgments all the time. That is, he responds, he reacts. within the framework of space
and time. He responds and reacts to the way men act. And he is long-suffering even
to the ungodly, even to those who are unthankful for all that
he gives them, even those who deny his existence. You know,
you hear people blaspheme God. And blaspheme's kind of an old
word, but it simply means to speak badly about. That's all
that the word means. But they do. And with today's
evangelical atheists, I call them, they're not only atheists,
they're trying to spread the so-called gospel of atheism everywhere
because they think religion binds men. It's true. A lot of religion
binds men. The gospel sets men free. But
they think they're doing people a favor by convincing them to
abandon all religion and become atheists, and the things they
say. I read again somebody's comment
on a Facebook post, and it was a religious-oriented one, and
actually I didn't care for it either, but he referred to God
as the Sky Daddy. That's one of their blasphemous
names for God. They think by using a contemptuous
name like that, a mocking name, that somehow or another they
are able to cause him not to exist. Of course, as the scripture says,
he that sits in the heavens shall laugh. He shall have them in
derision. Eventually, they'll find out
he does exist. He's not just a sky daddy. He
dwells above the heavens. His existence is eternal, not
only in that it's everlasting, that is, an infinite number of
moments, He exists outside of time and space. And they're pitiful
efforts, whether it be by atheism or by false religion, all of
this comes to nothing because nothing in time and space is
going to affect Him who lives outside of time and space. I
am the Lord, I change not. That's what God said. But we see that going on even
in our nation. We see the pattern of Romans
chapter 1 going on as this nation first began to deny the God of
Scripture, and God gave them over to a reprobate mind. He gave them over to a mind that
cannot distinguish between good and evil. And they begin to call
evil good and good evil. It's going on. Interestingly
enough, just as the people of Gomorrah, Sodom and Gomorrah,
both of those cities and probably most of the Canaanite cities
of that time, were given over to homosexuality. And we see in our nation, I don't
know how many percent of the people claim to be homosexuals.
And as you know well, we don't make a point out of preaching
against homosexuality is just one of the many sins which men
are able to exercise in rebellion against God. But when a society
is given over to it, now Bonnie and I we enjoy taking some time
to watch TV and you know with the new shows we almost as a
matter of laughing we say okay we're starting a new song. How
long before they introduce a homosexual couple? And usually before the
first commercial. It's just, they're promoting
it. What does that say? Homosexuality has always been
here. We know that. But God's giving the country
over to it, over to themselves, letting them go, releasing the
restraints. That's judgment from God. And here we sit. Here we
are. We don't like that. That's not
a self-righteous statement to recognize sin is sin is not self-righteousness. To have a hatred of sin as sin,
that's not self-righteousness. It only becomes self-righteousness
when we think that we are essentially better than those that God is
not restraining. The only reason that we're not
dressing up crazy and marching in gay pride parades or acting
in any manner of ungodly activity, the only reason is because God
keeps us back from doing it. It's in our flesh. It's there.
But we can say, that's wrong. That's wrong. But we see this
judgment coming upon our country. We see it in other places. It's
just as though God is letting go of the restraints that he
places on human nature to keep them from utterly destroying
themselves. We see these birth pains of judgment,
and we don't know whether, you know, well, God could rescue
us, could rescue our nation. He could send a revival if he
wants to. Do you realize that? We preach the gospel, and I realize
that it can be discouraging, can't it? We've been here nearly,
what is it, 34 years now. And our church isn't any bigger
than when we started 34 years ago. In some respects, it's smaller
in actual numbers of people involved with it. And we wonder,
why? Why? Why don't people love this
gospel we love? Why isn't preaching having a
greater effect? We're on the radio, we're on
the internet. I suppose from time to time, you have the opportunity
to share your faith with your friends and family that don't
believe as we do. And to us, it's such a glorious
message, we think everybody would want it. Who doesn't want a gospel
in which the entire work of the salvation of the soul is vested
and accomplished by the Lord Jesus Christ. A salvation that
cannot fail because we have nothing to do with it. That's the most
wonderful news I've ever heard. Nearly every form of Christianity,
and I'm using that in a broad sense, somewhere along the line,
they've got you involved in the process of bringing about your
salvation. But the scriptures do not speak
in that fashion. And so we preach this gospel.
We tell people, look to Christ, that's it. And it doesn't take
a seminary degree to look to Christ. It doesn't take a great
deal of wisdom, doesn't take any wealth. It doesn't take any
worldly influence. It doesn't take any ecclesiastical
authority or a preacher or anything to look to Christ. Oh, how simple the gospel is
and how glorious its blessings. It doesn't just save us from
a place of fire and deliver us to a place of eternal happiness. It takes us from being the wretches
we are by birth and makes us glorious like Jesus Christ himself. Who wouldn't want that? Most
of the world. God keeps judging. In all these
judgments up until the final one, there are the birth pains
of the final judgment. There are warnings that something
even more serious is coming, but the world doesn't pay attention
to the judgments, doesn't acknowledge that they come from God to get
people's attention. The world does not recognize
that the things they experience, we're just coming through COVID
and now we're kind of getting out of it. All the trouble it
brought on us, both medically and politically and socially,
I mean, it just upended our lives. And the world, the United States,
as a nation, I've never heard even one person consider that
God is saying, hey, pay attention to what I've said. Pay attention. This is just a little old virus
I sent. I've got a greater arsenal than
this. Now I thank the Lord that he
is so patient. Oh, the grief that he spares the sons of men
for many years. He may back off. He may begin
to restrain people. If he does restrain them, I know
how he'll do it. He will restrain the world at large. by working in the hearts of those
who profess Christ's name to quit trying to rule the world,
quit trying to moralize the world, but simply preach the gospel
to them. I enter into these debates, I haven't for a long time. Believe
it or not, I'm rarely on Facebook anymore. I consider that an achievement
now. Took me a long time to where
I wasn't kind of addicted to that. I don't pay much attention,
but people would talk about the religious folk, you know. All
up in arms about homosexuality. Who's at fault? Well, it's the
politicians. It's this, it's that. And I would
tend to shock people by saying, no, if you really want to be,
if you want to get to the root of it, so far as activities on
this earth are concerned, I blame it on the professed church of
the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, remember I said professed. There are a lot of people that
profess to be Christians that aren't. A lot of churches claim
to be Christian, they aren't. And what the church, the church
at large, they stopped preaching the gospel and began trying,
and have begun trying to moralize the country. They've entered
the political realm, and they think if we could just get some
more conservatives, get some more Christians in office, and
they could write some laws so people will behave. Law never
makes people behave. It just makes them go undercover,
that's all. God gave a law to the Jews. It was a good law. There's nothing
in it. Nothing in it, the Ten Commandments
and all the other little laws. Nothing in there overburdensome.
Nothing that anyone should have a problem with. And yet for all
of that, they were very nearly as wicked and sometimes even
worse than the Gentile nations around them. Law does not restrain
men. It drives their sin underground. We could write many, many laws,
call them old Christian laws, put them in our political law
books, and men might behave a little bit better outwardly, but it
would drive the corruption out of sight, And you know, just
like a wound that is not dressed, it's just covered up, it'll begin
to fester and it gets worse. And the church has taken up the
anti-homosexuality, the anti-abortion. Now personally, I'm against these
things. The scriptures are against them. But that's become their
message. They think that that's what they're
supposed to be telling the world. And all it's doing is increasing
these things. When the church Let me back up. When God sends
His Spirit to call men to, as Henry used to say, stand up on
their hind legs and speak the gospel of Christ with authority,
with conviction, it will not only stir the hearts of men and
women, it will not only bring people to faith in the Lord Jesus
Christ, it has a positive effect on the world they live in. But
when the church goes out and tries to moralize people, they
become less and less moral. And we see this going on. In
this story, we see this character of Lot, and he is set forward
as an illustration of a believer. Well, that surprises many people.
Generally speaking, if the preacher says, all right, I'm going to
preach on Lot this morning, everybody sits back thinking, oh, man,
he's going to lay into us now. He's going to tell us about all
our worldliness and all our failures and how we need to work to be
better than Lot was. Peter never did that. God told the story here. He inspired
Moses to write it down, the story of Lot. But he didn't afterwards
go and say, now, make sure you don't act like Lot. And our Lord
Jesus said, well, he didn't say, remember Lot. He said, remember
Lot's wife, because she looked back. She looked back to Sodom,
because that's where her heart was. Lot didn't look back, not because
he was superstitiously afraid that some kind of glance over
his shoulder would turn him into a pillar of salt. He didn't look
back because he knew there was nothing back there for him. What
he desired laid ahead of him. And so he kept going. Now there's
much we could learn from the failings of Lott But I think
he makes a beautiful picture of every believer and even the
church of the Lord Jesus taken as a whole. He is a righteous man. How do
you know that? Well, Peter said so. So he didn't
act righteous. Look what he did. He came down
to Canaan with his uncle Abraham. Boy, what a privilege from God. I mean, God only called one man
down there, Abraham. He didn't call Abraham's brother
Nahor, and Nahor was the father of Lot. He didn't call Abraham's
father Terah. Didn't call him. One man. And there wasn't anything special
about this man. He was an idol worshiper in Ur of the Chaldees.
He didn't know the true and living God. The true and living God
came and made himself known to Abraham and said, get away from
your family, leave your native country, and you go to a place
that I'll show you. Now that's interesting. It didn't
even tell him where he's going to go. First part of going is leaving. And so he says, you leave, and
then you go to a place I will later show you. he did. But he got stopped in a city
called Nahor and his father and his brother Nahor went with him
and all their families. So they stopped and lived in
Nahor for a while. Why is that? Well, Terah and
Nahor and his family, well what did the Lord say to them? Leave
your family. He took them along. So God let them sit there until
they die off. But there was one, Lot. Don't know how old he was. But I suppose when Nahor died,
Lot became part of the household of Abraham. Now, you know, I
imagine when Nahor died, that really grieved Lot's heart. It was his father. Little did
he know the great blessing that God brought to him by killing
his father, because he became someone else's son. Now we came
into this world, children of Adam, and so long as we're children
of Adam, we're under a curse. But Adam died. And God made us children of another
father, the father to whom all the promises were made. In the book of Hebrews, these
words are put into the Lord Jesus's mouth, I and the children you
have given me. Jesus Christ is our father, our
spiritual father. Our natural father has died,
and Jesus Christ has brought us into his family. And therefore, when he brings
us into God's promised land, he's not violating God's instructions,
which says, leave your family. We are his family. And so Lot became part of the
family of Abraham. And that had eternal consequences.
And he went down there with Abraham. They, you know, it's interesting,
wherever Abraham landed, he prospered. Even when he did what we would
consider to be wrong. takes his wife, they flee to
Egypt, I can't remember what it was that sent him down to
Egypt, but you know, his wife, even though, and this is something
remarkable, you know, Abraham didn't get to Canaan until he
was 75, making Sarah to be 65, but they're going down to Egypt,
and he says, look, you're a beautiful woman. I know what's gonna happen. King, one of his attendants is
gonna see you, and they're gonna, Um, want you now, here's the
interesting thing that, um, Sarah was his, uh, I believe
half sister and, uh, as well as his wife. And he said, when
I asked you who you are, don't tell them you're my wife. Cause
they'll kill me so they can have you. You tell them you're my sister.
And that's what happened, and sure enough, she ends up in Pharaoh's
harem. But then all at once, Pharaoh's
harem, his wives and concubines, they're not having children anymore.
And it's made known unto the Pharaoh, why? It's because he
has Abraham's wife. And so, here comes Pharaoh to
Abraham. Now what a mess, I mean, Abraham
did not even do what we would expect a man to do. I mean, he denied his wife. He
would rather his wife be given over to some other man's harem
than to risk that he should be put to death. Not a very good way to live. But then here comes Pharaoh and
he says, why did you do this to me? You told me she was your
sister, and I took her in innocently. And God told him that's the reason
I didn't kill you, because you didn't know. And so the Pharaoh
says to the king, here, take her back, and here, here's some
gold, here's some camels, and just loaded Abraham up. And he
leaves Egypt richer than when he went down, even though he
did not behave himself when he went down there. That was the
blessing of God upon Abraham. And now Lot has been connected
to him. And so what blesses Abraham,
blesses Lot. But anyway, they're living close
and Lot's a grown man now and he's got his own sheep. And both
of them, their herds are growing so fast, getting so big. God's
prospering them there in a land that's not easy to prosper in.
And their shepherds start fighting with each other. Now notice this
lot and Abraham weren't fighting with each other. Their shepherds
were fighting with each other. And Abraham said, the, the, the
land is not big enough for us. That is the land we're occupying.
He's and, um, he said, and, and Abraham was showing himself to
be more trusting than lot. But he says, um, you choose where
you want to be. If you go this way, I'll go that
way." Because there's no use that this fight can go on among
our shepherds. And so Lot, it says, he looked
on the well-watered plains of Sodom. Sodom and Gomorrah are
then there on the western, in the plain to the west of the
Jordan River. And so there was probably good grazing land, you
know. And he goes down there, and in process of time, it says,
he pitched his tent towards Sodom. And then he got closer. You can
just see it is closer and it's closer. And eventually lot is
sitting in the gate of Sodom. Normally speaking, when it is
said that someone sits in the gate of a city, it means he's
become a leader in the city because the gate was like what we would
call our courthouse. But whatever, that's where he
was, right there in the thick of whatever Sodom was. Now, brethren, we shouldn't act like
Lot did, but we do. All believers do to a greater
or lesser degree. We live in this world and we
are attracted by the things in this world. There are very few people I would
believe if they said, I don't want any more money than what
I got. You feel like saying, well, here, here's $1,000 check.
See if they take it or turn it down, you know? And so we're all attracted by
this. That's what our flesh is. And
so was Lott. I mean, he's thinking as any
normal businessman was, well, I got sheep and sheep need grass
and they need water. And the well-watered plains of
Sodom and Gomorrah and some of the other cities that that's,
if you're going to raise sheep, that's where you need to be.
And so he took that. And in so doing, he was not relying
upon the providence of God. He was relying on the wisdom
of man. What he should have said was,
it's awful nice grass, but I don't want to live there. Abraham, on the other hand, at
this point in his life, God had given him sufficient faith that
he didn't care where he lived. He knew God had made promises
to him, and part of the promise was that he was going to have
a son. He didn't have a son yet, so there's no way he was going
to die. So he said, Lot, you go wherever you want, and I'll
go the other way. Lot ends up in Sodom, and he's got him a
wife. And he got two daughters and
he must have brought these daughters up fairly well because it says
that they were virgin. Now they're living in an area of horrible sexual immorality. Another thing you notice if you
watch many television shows is now the idea of living together
of, uh, engaging in sexual relations without benefit of marriage is
not considered something that happens but shouldn't. It's considered
like, well, why aren't you doing that? Why would you ever get
married until you've, you know, done a test drive? Most of your romantic relationships
that you see in television today don't end in marriage. Well, same kind of things going
on, Sodom and Gomorrah. Here he had these two daughters,
but he had at least protected them. They were engaged, they
were espoused, which back then was a legal situation, but they were yet virgin. So
he taught his daughters right from wrong. But he's living in
one of the more notably wicked cities. And I mean the whole
Canaanite civilization was rather wicked. And Sodom was considered
to be the champion wicked city. Well anyway, there he is. And
here we are in this world full of wickedness. Now it's true
we can't leave here of our own. But like a lot, we tend to get
attached to it. We tend to seek after its blessings
and its pleasures. We think that we can get close
enough to the fire to stay warm, but not be in danger of getting
scorched. I've been through that pattern
so many times. I can go this far and it won't
hurt me." Now, we realize that in eternal things, nothing that
a believer does affects his blessedness in the presence of Christ. We
know that. We also know sin's wrong. It's
always been wrong. And the grace of God did not
make sin okay. The grace of God forgives sin,
but the grace of God does not excuse it. And sin in this world has its
consequences, but we think, you know, I'll go that far doing
this. And before long, you find out
you went that far this time, and next time you thought you
only went that far, but really you were that far. No farther
on, no farther. And before long, you find out
there's a horrible price to pay. in natural terms when we go astray,
when we act like the world. Now, the Bible called Lot a righteous
man. Why? He didn't act righteously. They called Lot a righteous man
for the same reason that the Bible calls us righteous. The
same reason he called Abraham righteous. Abraham believed God
and God imputed righteousness to him. And we who believe, we are righteous
not because of the way we act, but because by the grace of God,
his righteousness has been handed to us as a gift. Not offered to us as a gift,
assigned to us. It's our possession. We are righteous
through faith, but we're righteous by God's declaration. He says
we're righteous. And who's going to argue with
him? And that's the way Lot was righteous, that's the way Abraham
was righteous, and David, and all the apostles, and every believer
from way back to Abel. And Adam and Eve, if they were
believers, I don't know, but we know that Abel was a believer.
He was a righteous man. Was he righteous because he acted
better than Cain? We don't know. We don't know
what his life was like. We know why he was a righteous
man accepted by God. He believed God and lot for all
his faults and failures and weaknesses, he believed God. So Peter says
he's a righteous man. He's a godly man. In fact, his brother, Tim James
pointed out to us once he's the only person in the Bible that's
ever called both righteous and godly. Look at Lot, my friends,
we're looking at us. We may not show it outwardly
as much, God may restrain us as much, but he gives this example
of Lot. It shows us what we believers
are still in our nature. Much as we believe God, as much
as we're counted righteous and godly in his sight, we still
have much of the world within us and still For lack of a better
way to put it, we kind of like to carry on an affair with the
world while we claim to be married to Christ. But here's the wonderful thing.
For all of Lot's unfaithfulness, God saved him from the judgment
on Gomorrah, or Sodom. These two angels, these men,
angels who look like men, said, take your wife and your two daughters
who are here or you will be swept away when the city is punished. Peter said on the day of Pentecost,
save yourselves from this wicked generation. And what he meant
was you've got to leave this generation of unbelieving Jews.
That's what he was saying. And he didn't necessarily mean
physically. He was talking about a spiritual departure from them. And Lot was a believer, and God
knew it. I don't know what the angels
thought of him, but they said this, you stay in this city.
If you make this city your home, if this is where your heart is,
you're gonna die with the city. And we claim to be believers,
but you know, the Apostle John says, he that loves the world
does not love the Father. Just doesn't. The love of the
Father's not in him. We may like it a lot, we may
like some of the things that are in it, but we're not in love
with this world system that stands in opposition to the God that
we profess to believe. Nonetheless, these angels say,
you stay here, you're gonna die. And what's interesting is this, verse 16. when he hesitated. Two men from God, two angels
from God just told you that God's going to destroy this city. What
would you be doing? Well, I certainly, I mean, if
I believed him, I'd be running. I'd grab whoever I could and
drag them out with me. Get out of here. But he hesitated. Why did he
hesitate? Well, maybe he hesitated because of some good motives
falsely applied. Remember, he had two sons-in-law. They were the men who were engaged
or espoused to his daughters. And he had tried to warn them,
and they just mocked him. They laughed at him. And maybe
he's thinking, I got to give it one more try. Listen, brethren. We want to see people saved. We want to see our children saved. We want a community. I mean,
those that we love naturally, we desire them to be within the
kingdom of God. But here's the thing. We can't
save them. God can't. So we pray for them.
But when God says run, run. He hesitated. Did the angel say, okay, that's
enough, I've had it with you lot, burn, I don't care. Did they do that, just walk out
of the city? Oh, I love this. 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." People say, I don't believe in
sovereign grace. God won't make a man go against
his will. God won't force a man to do anything. Yes, he will. Yes, he will. Our Lord says, no man can come
to me except my Father which sent me, draw him. And people
think that that word draw means to simply attract, you know,
like a salesman might try to attract you, or a man might try
to attract a woman to woo her so that she will freely come
to him. That's not what the word draw
means. It's the word used when they hook up a couple of oxen
and put a plow on them. the oxen draws the plow. Do you think that plow wanted
to go along? That plow was perfectly content sitting there being left
alone. They drag it. It's also used when Paul says
these unbelievers, they drag you into court. It refers to
going where you don't want to go, where you had no intention
of going. And that's what's going on here. They grabbed them by
the hands and they said, come. I said, come. And they were going
to come if it required that the angels drag them out. Why? Because God is merciful and he
will not allow one of his chosen to perish with the wicked. Man, I'm glad of that. I am glad
of that. Where would I be if God by His
sovereign grace and immeasurable mercy did not grab me by the
hand and pull me out of the city of destruction." Well, they dragged him out of
the city, said, flee for your lives. Don't look back. Don't
stop anywhere in the plain. Flee the mountains or you'll
be swept away. You think now, okay, Lot's learned his lesson
now. No, my Lord. No. No, you don't say no to God. Well, we do. And I'm not saying
this, I kind of laugh when I say it, but actually it's not a funny
thing. And it's not something we ever
ought to say, well, that's just in our nature. So I'm not even
going to fret about it. Listen, we should never say no
to God or the messengers that he sends. Yes, Lord, whatever
you say. But no, Lord, my Lord, please.
Your servants found favor in your eyes and you've shown great
kindness to me in sparing my life. But I can't make it to
the mountains. The disaster will overtake me. Don't you think that the one
who sends the disaster knows how far to make it go? Once again, he's not living by
faith. He says, let me flee. He said,
there's a town near here. It's a small one. Let me flee
to it. It's very small, isn't it? Notice
how he keeps mentioning how small it is. Once again, I can live
in that much, that much of the world. I can go there and my life will
be spared. Here's a funny thing. The Lord wasn't just going to
destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. He's just going to destroy all
the cities in that Jordan plain there. Zoar included. Why did he think he would be
safe there? He had no reason to think he would. But he thought,
okay, I'll minimize, I'll minimize my affection for the world and
all this, and I'll go to a place like that, surely the Lord, or
surely I'll be safe there. Notice once again the mercy of
the Lord. He said to him, very well, I'll grant you this. Now is this, the angel speaking
for God, telling Lot, yeah, that's as good as the mountains. It's
God being merciful. God knowing that we will never
be perfect. But that won't stop him from
sparing us. So the angel said, okay, you
go there. I will not overthrow the town you speak of. It was
on the list. He said, I'm going to strike
it off. Why? Because you're going to be in it. would you think
of that? We live in a world, we are believers
in the Lord Jesus Christ living in this world and destruction
has already been passed upon it. Why hasn't God destroyed
it? We're still here. Notice what? Verse 22, get there
quickly, flee there quickly because I cannot do anything until you
reach it. I'm not saying we're important
by nature, but we are important to God. All believers, they're
important to God, even though there's no, you know, we can't
come up with a reason why we're important, but we are. And that
means God will withhold his judgment until there is no believer, that
is ultimate judgment, until there is no believer there to experience
it. Now some try to spread that out,
you know, say he's going to come take Christians out and then
seven years later destroy the world. No, it's much simpler
than that. God's going to come back and
he's going to gather his people to him and destroy the world.
But he will not destroy the world until every one of his people,
every one of his chosen redeemed people have been called by the
gospel, gathered under Christ. They are out of the way. and then everyone left will be
destroyed. They still don't know for sure
where Sodom and Gomorrah are, haven't found them. When the
Lord destroys, it's going to be pretty hard to find what's
left. But thanks be to God, and I mean that seriously. Oh, let
us give thanks to his name. We flirted with the world, chased
around with the world. We do that as believers. We act
like that, act like we shouldn't act. And when we're told, flee,
destruction's coming, we hesitate, you know, and the angels, God's
messengers. And remember, often these angel
beings are pictures of gospel preachers. Because an angel,
the word actually means just messenger. And gospel preachers
are messengers. And the messengers come, God
sends messengers, and they preach the gospel. And God, by his sovereign
power, through the messengers, grabs his people, pulls them
out of the city and into safety. And even when in their stubbornness,
they don't want to go to the mountains. They want to live
in a little city. God says, okay, I won't destroy that. But one
of these days, he's going to get us out of those little cities.
He's going to come and get all of us. And then he will destroy
this world with an everlasting destruction. And not one of those
he chose, not one of those Christ redeemed, not one of those that
the spirit called are going to participate in that judgment.
And it all comes down to this. They grabbed his hands and led
him out of the city. The Lord being merciful. All give thanks unto the Lord,
for he is good, and his mercy endures forever.