I want to preach a message on
something that I know I've mentioned several times by way of illustration. But the title of this morning's
message is A Portrait of a Righteous and Godly Man. A Portrait of a Righteous and
Godly Man. Now before we read the scripture
in 2 Peter chapter 2, Let's take a moment to consider the life
of Lot as it is recorded in the Old Testament. Now, just about
everybody here, at least all the adults, are familiar with
who Lot is. But he's only mentioned in the
span of a few chapters in the book of Genesis, that is so far
as his biography is concerned. He is the grandson of Terah. Terah is the father of Abraham. Abraham had three sons that we
know of. Abraham, Haran, and Nahor. Lot is the son of Haran. He is the grandson of Terah.
That makes him Abraham's nephew. He was born in Ur of the Chaldees,
which is where Abraham was from. And while still living in that
city, Lot's father, Haran, died. Somewhere during that time period,
God called Abraham and said, go to a country that I will show
you. However, Before we discover that
in Genesis chapter 12, we read at the end of Genesis chapter
11, that Terah took his son Abraham, and Abraham's wife Sarah, and
his grandson Lot, and they went to the city of Haran. Now it's only coincidence that
Lot's father's name is Haran, and that they end up in a city
called Haran. It's only coincidence, but it
can also be confusing. Heron died in Ur, so they all
went to Heron. Now, I remember reading one time
that they likely went to Heron because we know that as inhabitants
of Ur, they were idol worshipers, and they speculate that Terah
was likely one who worshiped the moon because the city of
Haran was where there was a kind of like the temple to the moon. What had likely happened is God
had spoken to Abraham and told him to leave and he said, get
up, leave your family, leave your household, everything, go
to a land I'll show you. He told his father what was going
to happen and his father says, well, look, I'm going along.
And since Haran was dead, Lot had kind of fallen to Terah to
take care of. So Abraham left, and Terah and
Lot tagged along. And because Abraham, in one sense,
did not fully obey, because it was told, leave your household.
That meant leave your father, your brothers, everything, you
know, and go. He didn't leave them. He went with them. And they ended
up stopping in another pagan city until Terra died. We're often hindered in following
the Lord. Doesn't make us lost or anything
like that, but we're often hindered in doing that which we've been
told to do because of our attachments in this world. We need to always
be aware of that. Now there was nothing at all
wrong with Abraham having affection and respect for his father. But
to allow his father to delay him in going to the land that
God was going to show him, that wasn't good. But you know what? God took the obstacle out of
the way. Tara died. And despite Abraham's slowness
in obeying the Lord, he still ended up exactly where God told
him to go. Now I say, watch your attachments,
don't let them hinder you, but know this, you'll never get it
completely right, and whatever lack of quick and faithful obedience
You don't show, it isn't gonna stop God from doing with you
and for you all that he had planned. And here's another little thing
to keep in mind. You do your friends and family
a favor when you do not allow them to come between you and
obedience to your God. Abraham didn't leave his household,
and so God took his household away, the part that was hindering
him. We do our friends and family
no favors if we allow them to slow us down in following our
God. However, once Tara dies, And
I assume Lot must be a young fellow at this time. I don't
know, he might be late teens, early 20s, I don't know. But
nonetheless, he was not considered old enough to leave alone. Because
then Abraham decides, okay, I'm going to that land that God said
He'd show me. And when he left, he took his
wife, and he took Lot, his nephew, and he took It says all the people
they had acquired in hearing, meaning servants and slaves.
They all went down to the land of Canaan. And then we don't hear about
Lot for several chapters. We hear some stories about Abraham,
some stories that do not reflect well on him, at least not all
of them. He went down to Egypt, and while
he's down there, Pharaoh sees Sarah, and Sarah's gotta be at
least in her mid to upper 60s. But she's attractive enough that
Pharaoh notices her. And Pharaoh asks Abraham, who
is this? And he says, she's my sister. That's what you call a half lie,
because she was his half sister. And Pharaoh took Sarah into his
harem. But God never did allow Pharaoh
engage in marital relations with her. Because Pharaoh did all of this
in ignorance. He didn't know this was a married
woman. And when he found out he took her back to Abraham and
said, leave, get out of here you caused me nothing but trouble.
And he did. Abraham left. But he left, here's
the interesting thing he went down there to Egypt, shouldn't
have gone in the first place. Allowed his wife to be taken
into Pharaoh's harem. And then Pharaoh tells him to
leave, and when he leaves, he leaves richer than when he went
down there. This shows you something about
the grace of God. It's always, I'm not saying that
riches are a necessary indication of his grace, but God often uses
them, particularly in Old Testament context, as an illustration of
his goodness. Wherever Abraham went, whatever
Abraham did, God continued to prosper him. So it goes back
to where he should have stayed. Next time you hear about Lot
is when Lot gets old enough and he's got his own sheep, got his
own business with sheep, got his own shepherds working for
him, and Abraham's flocks lots, flocks were too big for the area
that they occupied. So Abraham, well the two, the
shepherds of both those men started to argue with each other over
this. You know, hey that's our land
we're supposed to graze there get your sheep out of there that
kind of thing. So Abraham went to Lot and said, why should my
household and your household be at odds with each other? He
said, you see the whole land before you. You choose what you
want, and I'll take what's left. So Lot, thinking very naturally,
he sees the well-watered plains of Sodom. It's down in the southern
part of Israel. there's plenty of water which
means there's plenty of good grass, plenty of good pasture
land. And without consideration that
apart from Abraham he'd be nothing. In an utter lack of respect for
Abraham he chooses the good land and leaves Abraham with a hill
country. Of course Abraham, he didn't
care. But a lot goes down there. says
he pitched his tents towards Sodom. Next thing you hear about Lot
is that several kings, which don't think of them as kings
of mighty empires, they were just rulers of these various
walled cities, but they got together attacked several other cities
among those cities was Sodom and in the process of attacking
them they captured Lot and his household and all his stuff and
ran off with it. Word gets to Abraham and Abraham
gets together with some other kings or leaders of these various
city-states and And he gets his own 300 servants, fighting men,
and they go back and they rescue Lot. And they got Lot, and they got
his whole family, and all his sheep, all his stuff, got it
all back. The next time you hear about
Lot is when men that visited Abraham and they told, and one
of them was the Lord in what they call a pre-incarnate appearance. But he told Abraham that he was
going to destroy Sodom and that's when Abraham pled, well if you
find 50 righteous people in there will you spare the city? Yeah,
for 50 I would. Works them all the way down to
10. And someone speculated that that was Lot 10 made up Lot and
his family. including sons-in-law, there
was 10 of them. And the Lord said, yeah, if I can find 10
righteous people in Sodom, I'll spare the city. So he goes down
there, and as they approach the city, where do they find Lot?
It says he's sitting in the gate of the city. Now that doesn't
mean he's just sitting at the door through which you go in
to the city. the gate of the city meant that
you had a place of prominence, power, and authority. Now remember
He'd come to the Promised Land with Abraham, followed Abraham
all around. And then Abraham said, you choose. And what did he choose? He chose
to go towards Sodom. Now he's in Sodom. Not only is
he in Sodom, he's one of the prominent men in Sodom, living right there within the
walls. So those two men, he recognized
that they were more than just men. And he says, don't you stay
out here courtyard at night. You better come to my house."
Why? A lot knew what went on out in the city during the night. And so those two men, with air
quotes, went with him and were in his house. And lo and behold,
those wicked men of Sodom, begin knocking on the door. Lot, what? We saw you brought two men in
here, men not from our city. You give them to us. And the Bible in its very gentle
way of saying it says, bring those men out that we may know
them. They were a rapacious gang of homosexuals. What does Lot do? Now we would
think, our attitude would be, nothing doing, and you better
back away. Because I got means to dispatch
you. You leave these guests alone.
That's not what Lot did. Lot says, oh, don't do such a
wicked thing. Here, I've got two daughters.
I'll send them out. You have your way with them. what if your father did such
a thing? What would you think of your father from that point
on? That's exactly what Lot did. He was going to hand his daughters
over to these wicked men. Well, the angels slash men intervened. They struck the men with blindness.
The men, even though struck blind, were still so fully, or so filled
with lust that they kept going for the door. for it. But they held the door closed. And they told Lot what was going
to happen to the city of Sodom. And so Sodom goes, excuse me,
Lot goes and tries to warn his family of what's coming. That is his daughter, some of
his daughters had already been married and he goes to those
households and said, you've got to get out of here the Lord is
going to destroy this place. And the Lot's testimony had been so corrupted
among them, they laughed at him as though he'd lost his mind.
You crazy old man. That's not gonna happen. Imagine, after you'd raised your
children, that you went to warn them concerning the things of
God and they thought you were crazy. that your life had been
such that it was totally unexpected of them that you should ever
come to them with a warning from the Lord. And when the sun rose,
and it was time for that promised judgment to fall, they tell Lot,
take your wives and your daughters and run. Did he run? No. He hesitated. And finally, it says the angel
had to grab him by the hand and his wife and take them by force
out of the city. And when they got them out of
the city, they said, run, don't look back. Don't look back, just
run, get away from here. And I thought it was very interesting,
one of the angels said, because I cannot bring judgment on this
city till you're out of here. Now there's you a, what a blessed
thing for us believers. God cannot bring ultimate judgment
on the world till we're out of here. He will take his people out before
he destroys this world once and for all. As it says, it'll come nigh you,
but it won't touch you. Well, you'd think by now, Lot
would be getting the picture. And he says, I don't want to
run to the hills. Can I go over to this city over
here? It's just a little one. You think the Lord never gets
frustrated but when He comes among us He pretty much acts
like we do. Okay, just go. I'll spare that
city, you go in it. I think it was called Zohar.
But it's not long we find Lot living in a cave with his two
daughters and living in an incestuous relationship
with them. Giving rise to two nations that
would later on pester the Jews. One of them was Moab. And that's the last you hear
about Lot. Until the Lord said, remember
Lot's wife. And that's only a passing reference
to Lot because we didn't know Lot's wife's name or he could
have just said, you know, remember so and so. He had to mention
Lot so he could reference the wife. And the next time we hear
about Lot is in 2 Peter 2, beginning with verse 7. And if he, that
is God, rescued Lot, a righteous man, who is 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.
Now I gave you Lot's biography, and yet Peter, under the inspiration
of the Spirit of God, says Lot, a righteous man, one of the godly
whom God spared. Now how in the world do you get
from Lot as the Old Testament describes him? to Lot, the righteous
and godly man. How do you get from the Old Testament
description of Lot to the New Testament description of him?
And here's the thing, it calls him a righteous man while he
was living in Sodom. Because he said his righteous
soul was troubled by what these men were doing. I think that if we had known
Lot, if we'd lived at that time and believed as we do now, and
Lot, he ain't no believer. He's not one of God's elect,
come on. Or at least he hadn't proven it yet. Churches that have him under
discipline. And I'm using that term in the way many churches
use that phrase, you know. And yet Peter calls, under the
inspiration of the Spirit, calls him a righteous and godly man. Now, I want to make one observation
about the description of Lot, as it's shown in the Old Testament,
that will be good for us. You'll notice that the first
part of the description of Lot, he's doing the right thing. He's
living in Ur. He goes with Abraham to Haran, and then he goes with
Abraham to the land of promise. Everything about Lot that might
be called good was simply the result of someone taking Lot
along. The moment he was left to decide
for himself, he went wrong. Abraham said, choose. You know, it's a good thing God
doesn't let us choose, because every time we choose,
we choose wrong. God gave that example of Lot,
and you see it right there. Abraham said, choose, and that
ruined him. that Abraham had said, Lot we
are having some trouble you go there I'll go here. That gives
each of us some good land and some rough land you know it's
a fair distribution. But as soon as he gave the choice
to Lot, Lot messed it up. And I'm telling you right now
the moment God leaves you to your will you will mess it up
and mess it up royally. Now how do you know? I don't
have to read the Bible to know that all I have to do is read
my life. I have never, that I know of, decided to do the right thing. I've always wanted to do the
right thing, but every time I come to a crossroads and I'm left
to myself, not a crossroad, a fork in the road, or whatever it is,
I take the wrong one. Thankfully, our God doesn't abandon
us when we do that. And the only reason he lets us
do that is because we get to thinking pretty high of ourselves.
And he says, all right, let me show you what you are. Oh, here's
a fork in the road. Which way should we go? And we
think, and we look, and we find some way to choose the way we
want to go and make it look like it's the right way to go. We
don't say, I'm going the wrong way. We find out what we want,
and we find a way to make it look right. And we start down
the road, that path, and it's looking good, and we're making
progress in that way, and eventually it all falls down around our
ears. And thankfully the Lord is there to take us by the hand
and pull us out of it. The worst thing God can do is
leave somebody alone. I've heard people say, I just
wish God would leave me alone. Oh God, never leave me alone. Righteous man, godly man, self-centered, earthly-minded, poor father,
incestuous man, but godly and righteous. How do we reconcile those two
descriptions? Well, the first way we reconcile
it is to understand what the Bible means when it calls someone
a righteous and godly person. Now, we by nature get this all
messed up. But righteous, the Bible does
not call a man righteous because of how he lives. Why? Because there is none righteous.
No, not one by that standard. Nobody would be called righteous
if God declared a person to be righteous based upon how that
person lived. The only one who could ever be
called righteous based on how he lived is our Lord Jesus Christ. God could look at him and look
at his life and say, this is my beloved son in whom I'm well
pleased. And if God's pleased with you and the way you're living,
that means you're righteous by your own works. But that's never
been said about anybody but the Lord Jesus Christ. That is, God
never said that about anybody but the Lord Jesus Christ. The
rest of us, if we were put on trial based on the way we live,
God wouldn't call us righteous. You say, well, I've never shown
such disrespect to my elders as Lot did. So what? You've done
other things. Well, yeah, but I've never committed
incest. Done a lot of other things. We
all sin in different ways, but here's what's the same about
all of us. We all sin. And we all sin against the same
God, because there's only one God to sin against. As Brother
Mahan used to say, there's no such thing as a small sin because
there's no such thing as a small God to sin against. So all of us fall in the category
of lot. And even if our sinfulness has
not expressed itself in ways so obviously sinful, Our sinfulness is every bit as
sinful as Lot's sinfulness. And yet, under the gospel, we
hold ourselves forward as righteous and godly people. Why? Because the righteousness by
which God's people are declared to be righteous didn't come from
them. Paul said, I am not ashamed of
the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation. For in the gospel, a righteousness
from God is revealed. Now under the law, what must
we do? We must produce and render to God a righteousness. In the
gospel, we recognize we're incapable of producing a righteousness,
and we simply receive one from him. We have imputed to us, credited
to our account, a righteousness that we never performed. Now Abraham is the first one,
first I know of, in which this phrase is used. Abraham believed
God and it was imputed to him unto righteousness. It's not saying that God accepted
faith instead of righteousness, nor is it calling faith to be
righteous or to be righteousness. What it's saying is Abraham believed
God, so God credited him a righteousness. God gave him one. much as Peter says that Lot was
a righteous man, you know what it tells me? For all of his notable
faults, Lot believed God. He wasn't so good at following
Him. He wasn't so good at living a life consistent with what he
claimed to believe. But believe he did or he would
have never been called a righteous man. You can take the righteous
looking person, that is I mean someone who lives the strict
life. You can find the most religious
person, the one that seems most devoted to their church and all
this, and that's the way people describe godliness these days,
you know. Boy, lots of devotions, you know, and they're always
out witnessing and doing this, that, and the other. You take
a person like that, if he doesn't believe, he's among the wicked.
I don't care how good he acts. I don't care how religious and
devoted he seems." And then you can find a scoundrel
like Lot, or Jacob, or me, or you, and they believe God. In that Southern way, bless their
hearts, they believe God. You know what they are? They
are righteous and godly people. Now it's unfortunate that the
Greek word that's translated godly is translated by that because
it's got the word God in it. And the word God does not appear
in the Greek word. It just means good devotion.
That's all it means. But every believer, every last
one of them, is a righteous person. Righteous where it matters. And
where's that? In the sight of God. They may not look righteous in
the sight of men, but they are righteous in the sight of God,
and that's where it matters. And they are godly. For all their
wonderings, for all their stumblings, for all of what it seems like
to anybody looking from the outside is an almost total lack of interest
in the things of God, yet they are devoted to Him. They say that doesn't make any
sense. Of course not. Religions that make sense are
the religions that men come up with. And we say it makes sense
because they're made up by man's sense, and that's what we recognize
as sense. But you've got to realize the
religion that you and I follow is not a religion that was derived
from the mental capacities of men to reason out a way to come
to God. It's something invented entirely
by God Himself, and God does things differently than we do
them. He glorifies Himself in taking those who are quite obviously
unworthy of any good from Him, to whom you might rightly assign
many despicable titles, and He gives them these titles, Righteous,
Godly, Child, Son, Heir. And it's entirely by His grace. So we yell, but once God saves
a man, that straightens him up. Didn't seem to straighten up
a lot very much. He wasn't much before the Lord
opened his eyes, and he didn't seem to be a whole lot better
afterwards. Friend wrote a song one time, had a line in it that
said, my life began in sin, and it hasn't changed much. Well, now then, how did we get
from Lot, the despicable, to Lot, the righteous and godly? Why such a stark contrast between
the Old Testament description of Lot and the New Testament
description of Lot? Well, if you look at it historically,
something happened between those two descriptions. Jesus Christ
came and bore Lot's sin in his body on the tree. The Old Testament is a record
of old covenant ways. The New Testament is a record
of the new covenant. And what does it say in the new
covenant? I will forgive their sins and their transgressions. I will remember no more. We have no account of Lot's sinful
activities in the New Testament, because they don't exist. We have no record of the awful
conduct of that man. Because by the time Peter mentions
him, the Messiah has come, and he has borne in himself all the
sins of all the elect, of all the ages, and they're all gone. God doesn't keep a record of
them, not even in the Bible. That's a portrait of a righteous
and godly man. It's a portrait that only God
could draw. In His grace, He takes that wonderful
paintbrush of His, dips it into the blood of Christ,
and paints a picture of us that not even we can recognize. A portrait of perfection. A portrait with no blemish. A portrait that God himself would
love. And here's the interesting thing.
It looks remarkably like a portrait of his son. If you were to go in God's house,
you'd see portraits of all his children. They'd all look the
same. Why? By the grace of God. we are conformed
to the image of Christ. Am I a righteous and godly man? Yes, but I say that with humility,
sort of. You know what I mean. I know
what I am in the flesh and in my natural self, and I'm glad
you don't know. I really am, but I do. But I
do not hesitate to say that by the grace of God and the blood
of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, I am in the sight
of God a righteous and godly man. And if you're in Christ, the
same's true of you. Now there are some people who
hear a message like that and they'll say, I can just go out and live
to the flesh and go to heaven when it's all done anyway. Yeah,
there'll be some people who'll say that. But you know what it
did say about Lot? Despite all the sinfulness of
his own life, he was still troubled by the wickedness of those around
him. He didn't like their sin, he
didn't like his either. Now, brethren, I've got lots
of sin. So do you. And in one sense,
we liked it or we'd have never done it. But in another sense,
does it not vex our souls? Does it not vex our souls when
we see the world do what it does? And does it not also vex our
souls when we find so much of the world in us? That's because God has begun
a good work in us. It just doesn't make it to the
surface very often. The flesh is still here, and
it still does what it does. And so in our conduct, righteous
and godly? No. But by the grace of God, righteous and godly. I read through
the book of Song of Solomon. I do that every once in a while.
It's not a long book, and I'm kind of a romantic at heart anyway.
I love a good romance. I was telling my wife about it
later on that day. I said, it always gets me to
read what the man in the story says about the woman he loves. Because we know that, of course,
the man is Solomon, and the woman, we don't know who she was. Don't
even know if Solomon was referring to some actual woman. It's just
a poem he wrote. But we know, as with all the
scriptures, it was designed to teach us concerning the Lord
Jesus Christ. So the man's gotta be Christ,
and the woman has got to be the bride of Christ, the church. Now you read that article I put
in the bulletin. I love being here. I love being
the pastor of this congregation. I love you. This is a wonderful
place. But here's something I know too. We're all just flesh. That's
all we are by nature. And we've got our troubles and
all of that. But you read this line from the Song of Solomon. Solomon speaking to this woman,
but it's Christ speaking to his church. Imagine him looking at
us and saying, there is no flaw in you. Really now? I could list you
several. Lord says, I'm looking and I
don't see any. And my eyes are the only eyes
that count. So what's the portrait of a righteous
and godly person? anyone and everyone who believes
God. Doesn't excuse our sin, actually
will make us hate it. But we'll still do it. But in spite of all our wrongdoing,
God says, I see no flaw in you. We fully understand that woman
saying of the man, he is altogether lovely. But for God to look at
us and say, I see no flaw in you. What amazing grace. Unbelievable, apart from the
work of the Spirit of God. So, we don't go out and say,
all right, today, I'm gonna work real hard to be righteous. Now,
do what you can to do the right thing, but no need you trying
to earn yourself or make for yourself a righteous standing
in the sight of God. You already have one. Follow Him according to the grace
given you. Follow Him best you can. But know this, the best you can
is never going to be good enough. but it doesn't matter. Or as
Brother Tim James says, it matters, it just doesn't count. You are
in the eyes of God, righteous with no sin, and godly without
distraction. And someday we'll not only be
that way in the sight of God, we'll be that way in the sight
of everyone that looks at us. because he's going to make us
exactly like his son. And that can't happen too soon.
Well, may the Lord bless his word.