I said last week that this was going to be APG 13 sermon.
You can probably see why already given the nature of the passage
that Brandon just read. This is a tough passage.
Genesis chapter 19 is, in my opinion, one of the most
challenging chapters in the entire Bible.
It, it, it, it has some of the most disturbing imagery, some of
the most disturbing things that are happening.
And, and the city of Sodom became so infamous and and so
despicable that that God wiped them out.
And all of the kind of subsidiary towns that were part
of their dominion and part of their sway.
So infamous that the city of Sodom became the byword among
the people of Israel for hundreds and hundreds, even
thousands of years, of how not to be of the worst a city could
possibly be. The worst that a culture or a
community or a civilization could possibly be.
To be equal to or worse than Sodom was to be in line to be
destroyed by the Lord, just as Sodom had been destroyed by the
Lord. One of the challenges of this
passage is at for, for us in 21st century America is the way
Genesis chapter 19 has been wrongly interpreted for many,
many, many years. And it goes back many years, not
all the way back to the beginning, but it goes back many
years. And so we often hear this story
wrongly. And it's important that we hear
it rightly. And I'm going to explain that a
little bit later, but I want to get, I want to get into to kind
of the, the meat of what the real sin of Sodom is.
Why did God destroy Sodom and Gomorrah?
Because God did. God wiped them out completely
from the face of the earth. God wiped them out so thoroughly
that there are still debates now among archaeologists of where
the city really was because it was absolutely obliterated by
God's own hand. So let's talk about this.
The real sin of Sodom is prosperous and is a prosperous.
They were boy, I got the one of the most important slides.
It's up there twice and I got the grammar wrong.
Prosperous. Now I did get it right.
They were prosperous and arrogantly cold hearted.
That's the sin of Sodom. We miss it in Genesis chapter 19
because what we see in Genesis chapter 19 is kind of the end
result of how bad, how far off track a culture and civilization
can become when they are prosperous and arrogantly cold
hearted. But we know this is the real sin
because hundreds of years later, God speaking through the prophet
Ezekiel, is addressing his people and his people, the
nation of Israel. They have been in covenant
relationship with God for hundreds of years, since the
time of Abraham himself. And they got so bad as a nation
that God sent a Pagan empire, the Babylonian Empire, to come
in and wipe out the nation of Israel, to sack the capital city
of Jerusalem, to destroy the Temple, God's own house on
earth, God's physical dwelling place on earth, and to deport or
kill almost all of God's people, the Israelites, take them into
captivity in Babylon or kill them.
Or kind of the the least influential, the least
threatening, the least powerful, the least of the people were
left there just to work the ground because they were no
threat to the empire or to the people around them.
And God, through his prophet Ezekiel, one of his prophets,
through Jeremiah and Isaiah as well, but at this point, through
his prophet, Ezekiel is explaining to his people why
this happened to them. Ezekiel is speaking to God's,
God's people in exile in the Pagan empire of Babylon and
telling them, This is why this happened to you.
When when the Babylonians came and threatened, you said no, no,
no, no, no. We're God's chosen people.
We are a superior people. We are a superior nation and and
God will never allow us to be destroyed.
And God allowed them to be destroyed and they're in exile.
The prophet Ezekiel comes with God's own words to say This is
why this happened to you. And in that prophecy, which is
the book of Ezekiel, is long and very depressing.
Just, you know, if you want to jump into it, go for it.
It's a tough book to read. But God goes through and
compares his people, Israel, to other nations and other
civilizations that God had previously wiped out.
And one of them is Sodom. And this is what God says about
Sodom and why he destroyed it, as he is comparing his own
people, the nation of Israel, to Sodom and that civilization.
This is what God says. This was the guilt of your
sister Sodom. Just calling Sodom their sister
would have been enough to set their teeth on edge.
What do you mean? Sodom's our sister.
Sodom's that evil city that you wiped out years ago.
And God says, yeah, you're just like your sister.
She and her daughters had pride, excess of food and prosperous
ease, but did not aid the poor and the needy.
We're going to start in the middle.
Excess of food and prosperous ease.
It's a way of saying you're wealthy.
They were wealthy and they were prosperous and they were
complacent and had an arrogant disregard for the needs of the
folks that weren't benefiting in their civilization.
The poor and the needy, they had plenty.
They could have shared, they could have helped.
But they said who cares? It's their problem, not my
problem. Me and my family are OK, We're
doing all right. Who cares about them?
They had an abundance of resources but couldn't be
bothered to help the poor and the needy.
So they were prosperous. They were prosperous and they
had pride. They had pride, see, in their
prosperity. Sodom and Israel at this time
that they were in exile, they could have said, hey, we're
prosperous. Why are we prosperous?
We're prosperous because God has blessed us with with prosperity.
Let's bow down and humble ourselves before God and do
things God's way and give honor and reverence to God in the way
we live as well as with our words as well as with our ritual
acts of worship. But instead in their prosperity,
they said we're prosperous because we're great.
We are awesome. We are an exceptional
civilization. We're prosperous because we have
we work harder than the other people around us.
We're prosperous because we're smarter.
We're prosperous because we have the best civilization.
We're prosperous because we have the best education.
We're prosperous because we're strong and, and, and, and, and
have an excellent military. We're prosperous because we're
better. There's just something better
about us. That's how we got all of this
stuff. That's how we got all of this
stuff. And if these folks over there
that are poor and needy want to share in this prosperity, well,
they just need to be like us and then they'll be prosperous too.
Pride. They attributed their prosperity
to their exceptionalism. We're the best people.
We're God's people. We're the shining city on the
hill. We are the nation that all other
nations should envy and want to be like.
And if you want to share in what we have, you just need to be
like us. So their prosperity did not lead
to humble gratitude before God. It led to pride that elevated
them in their own eyes over the people that were around them.
And that kind of combination prosperity combined with pride
leads to a careless, cold hearted indifference to the
people around them that were in need.
The poor and the needy didn't get it, didn't get anything.
They're poor and needy. It's probably their own fault.
Let them suffer. It's just a sign that they're
not living the right way. It's the sign that God doesn't
approve of them like God approves of us.
It's the sign that they just need to get their act together,
pull themselves up by their bootstraps and do what they need
to do. Or it's just a sign that they
just aren't as good as we are. Maybe they've got the wrong skin
color. Maybe they've got the wrong
speak the wrong language. Maybe they've got the wrong
background and the wrong ancestry.
Maybe they've got the wrong philosophy.
Maybe they've got the wrong religion.
Whatever it is, it's wrong and they're on their own.
And it's not my job to take care of them.
Not my job. This was the guilt of Sodom.
This is why God wiped them out. The very next verse sums it up.
They were haughty and did abominable things before me.
Therefore I removed them when I saw it.
God said this cannot stand the word haughty there.
It's the same root as the word pride in the previous verse that
abominable things. This is important because the
mental and spiritual attitude of prosperity combined with pride
and a callous, cold hearted indifference to the poor and the
needy leads to all manner of abominable activity.
When you go through the the Old Testament and look at the places
where that word abominable is used, it's used for every type
of sin that the Bible labels is really, really bad.
Ezekiel uses this word a lot. I'm not even going to try to say
it in Hebrew, partly because I can't remember it in Hebrew, but
we don't need to talk about that.
But he uses it a lot, and Ezekiel uses it almost
exclusively to refer to adultery and idolatry as abominable
things. Ezekiel labels them adultery and
idolatry, which Scripture pairs over and over and over again.
But we know there were other abominable things going on in
the city of Sodom. There were other abominable
things going on in the city of Israel.
And there is a certain thing in that passage in Genesis that has
been lifted out and highlighted. It's been misnamed and turned
into the thing that Sodom did wrong.
And we got to take a minute and look at that because the
cultural push in this direction is so strong that if I don't
push back against it explicitly, then then I'm not doing my job
here. When I'm preaching today the
abominable things, some folks say that the sin of Sodom is
homosexuality or was homosexuality.
I got to say, homosexuality is not even mentioned in Genesis
19. You say, pastor, pastor, those
angels came in the form of men and the men gathered to have sex
with them. That's homosexuality.
That's not homosexuality. That's gang rape.
You get that? This is, this wasn't people
engaging in homosexual behavior. This was a group of men coming
to rape two people. And to insist that homosexuality
was the sin here is to say that if the angels had been women,
this wouldn't have been a big deal.
God would have said, oh, well, that's not that bad, they're
just raping women. And I don't think anyone
believes that. I hope no one believes that.
I'm surely don't think anyone here believes that.
But that's the implication. To say that if the guests, the
visitors had been women, that the sin wouldn't have been as
bad somehow implies that raping women is not as bad as raping
men. This is an abominable thing.
This is it's an abominable thing.
When 2 strangers come to town. And Lot, who's a judge, he has a
leadership role in the city of Sodom.
He knows how dangerous this city is for these men.
So he says don't sleep in the square.
That would have been the normal thing.
Don't sleep in the squared. Come to my house and he gets to
the house and he feeds them. So now they have the, the, the,
the right of hospitality of guest protection.
Anyone here fan of Game of Thrones?
If you're, if you're a fan of Game of Thrones, you understand
one of the big pieces in Game of Thrones was, was, was salt and
bread. When you visit someone's house
and you get salt and bread and now you have the protection of
that household. George RR Martin didn't make
that up. That's an ancient tradition and
it's a very powerful tradition. And Lot was trying to protect
these men by bringing them under his protection.
But his protection didn't mean anything.
That's how far the city had become, how far down the road of
detestable thinking, how cold hearted and arrogant that they
had become. And Lot wasn't free from this.
Lot's solution was to offer his daughters to be raped instead.
Take my daughters, they're virgins.
Do with them whatever you want. Just don't attack my guests.
Some people defend Lot and say that they that the value of
hospitality is so high, such a high value, that it's a better
thing for his family members to be raped than for his guests to
be raped. I'm not going to.
I'm not going to hold that up as a virtuous act on Lot's part.
To me, it's just a sign. I mean, Lot chose to live there.
Remember, this was the city Lot chose to live next to and is now
living in. This is the city that Lot looked
at and said, oh, this is a good place to raise a family.
Yeah, I want my kids growing up with these kids and learning how
to act like these kids, act and think like these kids.
This is what Lot raised. He chose this.
He chose this, so this detestable thing and, and in the
eyes of ancient peoples, when the story was first written and
story was first told, the gang rape of guests in violation of
all of the deeply held rules of hospitality is about as
detestable a thing as anyone could imagine.
The fact that it was men rather than women doesn't make a
difference. This is what this is.
This is when we talk about, you know, slippery slopes, when a
culture and a civilization embraces their prosperity with
an attitude of pride, saying we're so wealthy because we're
exceptional, and then becomes callously indifferent to the
poor. The Scripture tells us there in
that society and in that culture, eventually nothing will
be unthinkable and every awful thing will be done and embraced
by the community. And everyone had embraced it.
Scripture tells us every man, young and old in the city came
to Lot's house that night. Do you hear echoes here?
I hope you hear echoes here. If you've been listening to
these Genesis sermons for a while of back in in, in early in
Genesis chapter 4, chapter 5, when Cain killed Abel and God
said to Cain, where is your brother?
And Cain said, am I my brother's keeper?
Cold hearted indifference. He just killed his brother, but
he didn't care. In Genesis 6, just before the
flood, when God says the thoughts and inclinations of
every heart was always evil all the time, and so God wiped them
out. And here in the city of Sodom,
the thoughts and intention of everyone's heart was always evil
all the time, and so God wiped them out.
It's the same pattern over and over and over again that humans
repeat somehow without getting the message, somehow without
getting the message of the real sin of Sodom was prosperous,
being prosperous and arrogantly cold hearted.
Having all of that blessing, saying it's because I'm great
and who cares about the people that don't have it.
God will not tolerate that. And that's why this is so
important. Why this is not a matter of just
theological nitpicking and, and, and, and, and it's not a it's
not a question of, you know, political correctness here.
This is extraordinarily important for us as God's people
and the body of Jesus Christ and the world today in 21st century
America day today to understand why this is so important.
The story of Sodom and Ezekiel's prophecy.
These are warnings, and if we mislabel the sin, we miss the
warning. If we mislabel what the problem
really was, we fail to grasp the warning.
And the warning is this. The cultures and civilizations
that are arrogant in their prosperity and take pride in
their prosperity and become indifferent to the needs of the
vulnerable and the needy and the poor around them, God will not
tolerate and God will eliminate. It's the closest you're ever
going to see me get to a fire and brimstone sermon.
But God gives these warnings for a reason.
There is a reason why over and over and over again in the
Scripture, the city of Sodom is used as a byword because that
culture, that civilization was the very antithesis of the
Kingdom of God. It was the opposite of what God
intends for all of His people to live and how all of His people
should live. And if we miss that warning,
particularly when we live in the most prosperous nation in the
history of the world, If we miss that warning, we run the risk of
being like Lot, moving into the city of Sodom and failing to
have any impact at all on the culture and the spirit of that
city as one of God's chosen people, one of God's called
people. Lot had no impact there, none
whatsoever. Not on his wife, not on his
daughters, not on his son-in-law.
He had no impact on the people of the city outside of his
family. He became Co opted by the
culture and his family, although they didn't die that day, were
destroyed as well. We'll talk about that in a
minute. We've got to see the warning so
that we don't miss the warning, so that we can be the faithful
witness and provide the testimony and seek the Kingdom
of God rightly in the midst of this prosperity.
Sodom is the polar opposite, the antithesis of the Kingdom of
God, and part of our responsibility of the church and
being salt and light in the world is to be an influence in
our communities and our culture and our civilization so that we
do not descend into the city of Sodom, which we could, which we
could. God rejects and destroys
cultures and communities and nations that are prosperous and
arrogantly cold hearted toward the poor and the needy.
That is clear over and over again throughout the scripture.
This warning is personal as well as social and this is important
we we have a in the United Western Christianity is tends to
be very, very individualized. We it's hard to escape that I
can't I best I can do is to be aware that it's a thing that
that we talk a lot about individuals getting saved and
are you saved? Are you going to heaven?
Am I saved? Am I going to heaven?
God was addressing a civilization here, a city, a
community, a group. But there's a personal level to
this. There's A and the personal level
is I got to check my temperature.
I got to see, am I being more influenced by the world's
culture around me or am I influencing the culture of the
people around me? Am I being drawn along in the
current, or am I pushing against the current?
Am I intentionally living out the values and the ways of the
Kingdom of God? Or am I simply accepting as
normal what's happening around me because that's the way
everyone's doing it and it seems to work?
There's a personal level to this, but this is the warning is
social. Those two angels were sent not
to punish a person, but to wipe out a civilization.
Ezekiel wasn't speaking to an individual.
Ezekiel was speaking to a nation in exile.
And the warning is not just for individuals to straighten up and
fly right, but for cultures, for cities, for communities, for
nations to return to the Lord and to exercise within their
cultures and communities and civilizations and nations the
values of the Kingdom of God, the Lord our God.
So what do we do in all of this? How do we respond?
Well, we got to check our GPS.
I'm going to ask your forgiveness.
We're going to figure out where we are, if we're going to figure
out where we are on the spectrum of the Kingdom of God or Sodom.
Which city are we heading to? Are we heading to the New
Jerusalem or are we heading towards Sodom?
We got to check our GPS. Forgive me, I'm about to give
you an awful pun and I feel the need to ask your forgiveness
upfront for that. Our God positioning system, I
know it's lame, but it works. So we're going to check our GPS.
Where are we positioned? Are we, are we positioning
ourselves according to God's values and God's call in our
lives? Are the culture's values and the
culture around us call on our lives?
Are we prosperous? Are we arrogant?
Are we cold hearted? And we can think about that as
individuals, but it's important that we think about it as a
culture and as a civilization, as well as cities and counties
and countries. Are we prosperous?
Are we arrogant? Are we cold hearted and
different to the needs of the poor and the needy?
Because if we are, we will be wiped out eventually,
eventually. So let's let's walk through it.
Are we prosperous? Yes, yes, the United States
again, the most prosperous nation in the history of the
world. It is.
It is true that that even those living at the poverty line in
the United States are wealthy compared to the standards of the
rest of the world. There is no denying that we are
prosperous. If you have a refrigerator with
food in it in your house, you are among some of the wealthiest
people in the world. If you own a house, you're
really among the wealthiest people in the world.
If you own a house and a couple of cars, you're among the
wealthiest people in the world. We live in a prosperous nation.
There is no doubt about that. There is no escaping that.
And when, when God looks at wealth and prosperity, God does
not see the lines that we draw on the map and say, oh, well,
yeah, I know. But they were living there.
And they're not nearly as wealthy as those folks in LA or
Chicago or Dallas OR, you know, New York.
God looks at the whole world, all of his people, everywhere.
So, yeah, we're prosperous. What about the arrogant part
here? We can be arrogant if we choose
to be. We can wave the flag of American
exceptionalism and say that the reason why we're so prosperous
is because we are just that good.
You know, we work harder, we try harder, we're smarter.
We've got all of this amazing culture and history and
civilization behind us, and we have what we have because we are
awesome. That's the road to Sodom.
Or we can humble ourselves and choose humility instead and say,
my God, you have blessed us with so much.
We know that we're not better than any other flesh and blood
people on this earth, but you have blessed us richly.
Show us how to share this blessing.
Show us how to use the prosperity you've given us to
lift up the poorest of the poor, to defend that most vulnerable
of the vulnerable, to care for the needy both down the road and
on the other side of the world to the best that we can.
We'll never fix all the problems.
We'll never solve all the problems.
We'll never care for every single person that's poor or
needy, but how can we do a little bit better next year than
we did this year? That's a choice that we have in
our prosperity. We can respond with arrogance or
we can respond with humility. And then are we cold hearted or
will we choose to be compassionate?
We have choices in these. We were if we were, if you were
born into the United States, you were born into prosperity.
If you moved to the United States from a place that was
much poorer, you moved into prosperity.
We're not going to change that. But we can decide.
Will we be humble and will we be compassionate when we look at
those who are vulnerable, in need and in need and, and blame
them for their situation? Or will we say, what can we do
to lift them up, to care for them, to love them?
There's a moral philosophy. I can't remember.
I cannot remember which one of the old dead guys came up with
this, but they said in their conception of how good worked in
the civilization, they said if a thing isn't good for the poorest
people in the civilization, then it's not good.
I don't know if I could ever. I don't know if you can.
Drawing hard and fast absolute lines is always risky business.
I think that's a great way to think about things in our
communities and our counties and our school systems and our
culture and in our country. When we're walking in to our
neighbour's house or when we're walking down the street or when
we're walking into the voting booth, say, is this good for the
folks that are the most vulnerable and the most needy?
And if it's not, is it really good?
Is it really good? Again, we can't.
We are prosperous. We are prosperous.
So we got to choose. Are we going to be humble and
compassionate or are we going to be arrogant and cold hearted?
The real sin of Sodom is they chose arrogance and cold
heartedness and Lot didn't escape it.
The rest of the passage in Genesis 19 is this.
As they're fleeing the town, Lot goes to his sons in law.
And Lot had such little influence and impact on his sons
in laws that when he told them that the God was about to
destroy the city that they needed to leave, they just
laughed at him. Crazy old man.
So Lot took his wife and his daughters and they were fleeing
the city and his wife loved Sodom, no knowing exactly what
Sodom was. His wife loved Sodom so much
that she turned around and was longing to return to Sodom and
God took her life. So it was Lot and his daughters.
They fled to a small town 1st and then Lot was afraid there
and so they fled up into the mountains and Lot's daughters
said, Dang, I probably should have said that in church.
Rats said we're out here in the mountains.
Our fiancees are dead. Our dad has us up here in the
mountains. We don't have any kids.
Dad's not Dad's a drunk. He was.
We need someone to carry on after us.
We need kids. So what did Lot's daughters do?
They raped their father. They got him drunk.
They had sex with him to get pregnant so they could have a
family of their own. If you don't think that's rape,
just flip it around. If Lot had said my daughters
need kids, I'll get him drunk and I'll sleep with him, it's
rape. His own family doing exactly the
same thing that those men were doing to the angels or wanted to
do to the angels. Every heart, every thought
inclined to evil all the time. Just after having seen the city
be destroyed, they said the best solution to our problem is rape.
Detestable things, all manner of detestable things, become very
real possibilities and actual realities when we commit to a
life of arrogant prosperity and cold hearted indifference.
That's the real sin of Sodom. That's the culture and
civilization and mindset that we as the Church of Jesus Christ
are called to stand against and live against and love against in
Jesus name, Amen. Amen.