Perhaps parts of that hymn or psalm are somewhat shocking for us to be singing as New Testament believers, especially in light of my sermon this morning. But, you know, the Psalter Hymnal Committee has a website with some appendices to their introduction. One of them is on singing the imprecatory songs by Brian Estelle, a professor down at Westminster. So perhaps some devotional reading for you or academic reading for you this coming week. We’ll continue in our text from this morning in Genesis, beginning in chapter 19, verse 1 for our Old Testament reading. Genesis chapter 19, beginning in verse 1, that’s page 15 in your pew Bibles. This is the word of the Lord.
The two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them and bowed himself with his face to the earth and said, my lords, please turn aside to your servant’s house and spend the night and wash your feet.
And then you may rise up early and go on your way. They said, no, we will spend the night in the town square. But he pressed them strongly, so they turned aside to him and entered his house. And he made them a feast and baked unleavened bread, and they ate. But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man surrounded the house. And they called to Lot, where are the men who came to you tonight?
Bring them out to us that we may know them. Lot went out to the men at the entrance. and shut the door after him and said, I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. Behold, I have two daughters who have not known any man. Let me bring them out to you and do to them as you please only. Do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof. But they said, stand back. And they said, this fellow came to sojourn. and he has become the judge. Now we will deal with worse with you than with them.
Then they pressed hard against the man lot and drew near to break the door down. But the men reached out their hands and brought lot into the house with them and shut the door. And they struck with blindness the men who were at the entrance of the house, both small and great, so that they wore themselves out groping for the door. Then the men said to Lot, have you anyone else here?
Sons-in-law, sons, daughters, or anyone you have in the city, bring them out of this place, for we are about to destroy this place, because the outcry against its people has become great before the Lord, and the Lord has sent us to destroy it. So Lot went out and said to his sons-in-law, who were married to his daughters, up, get out of this place, for the Lord is about to destroy the city.
But he seemed to his sons-in-law to be jesting. As morning dawned, the angels urged Lot, saying, up, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be swept away in the punishment of the city. But he lingered. So the men seized him and his wife and his two daughters by the hand, the Lord being merciful to him. And they brought him out and set him outside the city.
And as they brought them out, one said, escape for your life. Do not look back or stop anywhere in the valley. Escape to the hills lest you be swept away. And Lot said to them, oh no, my lords, behold, your servant has found favor in your sight, and you have shown me great kindness in saving my life, but I cannot escape to the hills lest the disaster overtake me, and I die.
Behold, this city is near enough to flee to, and it is a little one. Let me escape there. Is it not a little one? And my life will be saved. He said to him, behold, I grant you this favor also, that I will not overthrow the city of which you have spoken. Escape there quickly, for I can do nothing until you arrive there.
Therefore, the name of the city was called Zoar. The sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zoar. Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven. And he overthrew those cities and all the valley and all the inhabitants of the cities and what grew on the ground. But Lot’s wife behind him looked back and she became a pillar of salt. And Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord. And he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the valley. And he looked and behold, the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace. So it was that when God destroyed the cities of the valley, God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow when he overthrew the cities in which Lot lived. sends our reading from the Old Testament.
If you’ll turn with me, if you wish, to Revelation chapter 18. Revelation chapter 18, beginning in verse one, that’s on page 1198 in your pew books. Revelation 18. After this, I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority, and the earth was made bright with his glory.
And he called out with a mighty voice, fallen, fallen is Babylon the great. She has become a dwelling place for demons, a haunt for every unclean spirit, a haunt for every unclean bird, a haunt for every unclean and detestable beast. For all nations have drunk the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality, and the kings of the earth have committed immorality with her, and the merchants of the earth have grown rich from the power of her luxurious living. Then I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, and lest you share in her plagues. For her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities.
Pay her back as she herself has paid back others, and repay her double for her deeds. Mix a double portion for her in the cup she mixed. As she glorified herself and lived in luxury, so give her a like measure of torment and mourning. Since in her heart she says, I sit as a queen, I am no widow, and mourning I shall never see. For this reason, her plagues will come in a single day. Death and mourning and famine, and she will be burned up with fire. And for mighty is the Lord God who has judged her.
Sends our reading from the New Testament. Let’s pray and ask God’s blessing upon the preaching of the word. Lord, we thank you for revealing yourself through your word, even in these passages, are difficult in many ways. We ask that you would make our hearts humble and teachable tonight, that we might learn about you, that we might come to understand your truth, that we might come to saving knowledge of Christ and be deepened in our faith, that we would learn how we ought to live in light of these evil days. And we ask all of these things for Christ’s sake. Amen. So our story picks up where we left off this morning.
If you were here, and I think almost everybody was, you’ll recall that the Lord himself came down in human form to talk with Abraham. And because the Lord had chosen Abraham to bring forth the very savior of the world, Jesus Christ, from his descendants, the Lord decided to reveal his plans to Abraham. In this case, these plans were war plans.
The cities of the plain, Sodom and Gomorrah, had done great and notorious evils, and their victims had risen up in the heavenly court to plead with the Lord to put an end to their wickedness. The Lord showed us just how concerned he is with justice, because he sends two angels down to Sodom to investigate, to see whether, in fact, all of the reports were true.
And as the angels headed down to the city, Abraham pled with the Lord to spare the city from destruction, asking if he would destroy the city if there were 50 or 45 or 40 or 30 or 20 or even 10 righteous people in the city. And at each point, the Lord assures Abraham that he’s not going to destroy the city. But Abraham’s concern for the city was not impartial either. Abraham has family in the city. This man Lot, who we read about in chapter 19, is the nephew of Abraham who had chosen to settle in the city of Sodom. And so Abraham’s unspoken request as he pleads with the Lord is that the Lord not annihilate his nephew along with the rest of the wicked in the city. And we’ll see that the Lord does answer Abraham’s prayer. even though the city is ultimately destroyed.
And so tonight with that scene set, our story picks up as the two angels arrive in Sodom. And we’re going to consider this really harrowing story of sin and judgment in Sodom and of the salvation of Lot out of the midst of the city, doomed to extinction. And again, we’ll consider this in three parts. First, we’ll see the trial of Sodom and the trial of Lot as well. Then second, the Lord’s deliverance of Lot.
And then finally, again, as with this morning, our own situation as those living in a world and a city doomed for destruction, the attitude which we must possess as we wait the completion of our salvation. So Dusk is just settling over the city of Sodom when the two angels enter. And as luck would have it, Lot himself happens to be the first person that they run into.
He’s sitting at the gate, and he immediately comes to them to greet them. He’s very respectful. He bows to them and honors them. And after greeting them, he invites them to his house. Now this all seems well and good, but for some reason the angels resist his invitation. No, we’ll sleep here in the town square. I’m sure it’ll be fine. It seems like a quiet town.
And at this point already things start to get a little weird because our text says in verse three that Lot presses them strongly. Now, if you’re following along in the ESV, there’s a similar language that gets used later on when the men of the city press Lot to bring his guests out. And this is actually the same word. This is almost a violent term.
And so we’re really meant to wonder here, what does Lot have in store for these visitors to Sodom? Are Lot’s intentions good? Is Abraham going to be vindicated in assuming that Lot is a righteous man at all? Lot here is on trial as just as much as the rest of the city.
But the angels finally accept his invitation and things seem to get off to a good start. He prepares a feast for them. He prepares beds for them. And then no sooner have they gotten ready for bed when there comes a pounding on the door. Somehow word has gotten out that two strangers have come into town. Now a mob appears, has been riled up.
We read here that the entire city has come to give the visitors a Sodom-style welcome. Young and old, rich and poor, the mayor, the street sweeper, and the children right alongside their fathers, eager to follow in their parents’ wickedness, come along. And they’ve all come, demanding that Lot brings out his guests, that they might know them.
Now, we considered this morning some of the ways that the Bible describes the sin of Sodom throughout the rest of the Old Testament and the New Testament. And it’s good for us to revisit this issue again briefly here. Some observations we can make from the text. First of all, now it’s maybe a little clearer to us why Lot might be so insistent that the men come to his house, if in fact he is the righteous man.
It seems that he feared for their safety if they remained out in the open unprotected. He appeals later on to the fact that he had brought them into the protection of his house. And yet at the same time, Lot himself seems quite unprepared for what comes to pass here. It seems that the citizens of Shaddam perhaps have not always behaved quite so boldly as they do this night.
Here we see their sin reaching a climax, a fever pitch on the eve of the city’s destruction. Now, throughout the Bible and throughout the ancient world as a whole, friendliness to the stranger, to the needy, to the immigrant, to the traveler, this is a key virtue. This morning, we saw that the prophet Ezekiel, when he was recalling the sins of Sodom, The first thing he mentioned was their neglect for the poor and the needy. And here we actually see Sodom’s hostility to the foreigner in two different ways. First, in their violent intentions towards the visitors, towards the travelers, but also in their violent intentions and their despising and their hostility towards Lot.
This man came as an immigrant and now he thinks that he can lecture us about morals. He thinks he’s so high and mighty, so we’re going to do worse things to him than we had planned for the visitors. But the sin of Sodom isn’t only limited to a failure of hospitality and of basic justice. There’s also a sexual component to the sin.
We see this even in the Hebrew word for knowing, which is often a double entendre in the Bible. It can mean both finding out, they want to know the men, as in find out why they’re here, whether they might be spies. And also to know them, as we even say, in the biblical sense.
And the practice of various forms of sexual immorality, and here climaxing in an attempt to rape these angels, if you’ll forgive my more explicit use of language, stands behind many of the other indictments of Sodom that we find in scripture, especially in 2 Peter and Jude, when Jude, Peter and Jude speak of them as licentious, disregarding social norms, sexually immoral, and even seeking strange flesh.
But finally, we see that the actions of the men of Sodom reveal an opposition to God’s authority, which is another thing that the prophets and New Testament apostles draw out of their example of Sodom. We see this in their lust after and their violent intentions towards not just any old human, but even towards angels. And so Ezekiel, Peter, and Jude all speak about Sodom’s sin as a rejection of authority and even blaspheming the holy ones, the glorious ones. And so Lot, who we see ends up being rewarded for his kindness and his hospitality to angels, In the same way, the citizens of Sodom, even if they’re not consciously aware, Lot may not have been consciously aware that he was dealing with angels, but he’s still going to be rewarded for his good treatment of them. In the same way, the citizens of Sodom are going to be judged and punished for abusing angels, even if they’re not consciously aware that they are angels. So we see that this fever pitch of the city’s sin really has expressed itself ultimately as a rejection of God’s authority and the authority of his messengers, his angels. But recall that Lot is on trial here just as much as the men of the city. So we see now, to Lot’s credit, it seems that Lot doesn’t give the men over, but rather defends them.
He puts himself between the mob and the guests. He closes the door behind him so that they will be safe. And then he pleads with the men of the city not to molest his guests. Now, at this point, I want to assure you that Lot is not doing what you might think he’s doing here. It’s a shocking thing. to hear him offer his daughters as a substitute for these men. There are commentators and pastors who will twist themselves into knots trying to defend Lot’s actions here. But I want to assure you that Lot here is not actually offering his daughters to this mob.
He doesn’t intend, I’m going to show you why in a minute, he doesn’t intend to go through with his suggestion. Indeed, he probably couldn’t even go through with it, if you’re paying attention to how the story unfolds, because probably his daughters are not even in his house. So let me explain.
So later on, we read that the angels ask Lot, do you have anyone else in this city? Sons-in-law, sons, daughters. And then we read that Lot goes out to find his sons-in-law. And at this point, almost every English translation, except for the King James, ironically, translates this text quite poorly. In the original Hebrew, it doesn’t say that Lot goes to the sons-in-law who are going to marry his daughters. as it says in your ESV. It just says that Lot goes to the sons-in-law who were married to his daughters.
His daughters weren’t virgins. They were married. The next morning, furthermore, when the angels tell Lot to get out, see here, this is verse 15. They say, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, at least that’s what it says in most of your English translations. But again, they’re not saying that. They’re actually saying your two daughters who have been located, who have been found.
And the implication here is that Lot couldn’t convince his sons-in-law, but he did bring along his daughters from their respective houses. Now, the Hebrew text is somewhat ambiguous. Translators aren’t stupid when they go about the work of translation, and I hate to even bring up this sort of thing, except for the fact that here it really matters. It matters because Peter calls Lot a righteous man, a man who tormented his soul, day after day, living in the midst of the wickedness of Sodom, the sexual immorality of Sodom. We just assume that lie is telling the truth to these wicked people.
But he’s probably not. He doesn’t have daughters right behind the door. He’s not actually willing to give them to the men of Sodom. Rather, he’s trying to buy time so that he can help the men escape. Presumably, if the men acquiesce, he can go back in the house on the pretense of getting his daughters and perhaps get the men out some other way or something of that nature.
And yet, we really should be assured of this because of how the rest of the Bible understands a lot, especially the Apostle Peter. We shouldn’t twist ourselves into circles saying that Lot’s willingness to sacrifice his daughter somehow reveals his deep commitment to the ancient virtue of hospitality that we just don’t really understand in the modern day or anything like that. We shouldn’t make that mistake. Here, Lot, though he’s presented initially as an ambiguous character, once we see that his daughters are married, And out of the house, we should see that Lot is vindicated by this act of shrewdness on his part, trying to save the Ben, trying to save his visitors.
And if anything, Lot’s offer only serves to further indict the men of Sodom. Now, think about it. Normally, when you try to convince someone not to do something wrong, you try to reason with them and tell them, that’s wrong, don’t do that. Or present them with a better option, or something like that. And here Lot knows that these men are so far beyond reason that the only thing he thinks might entice them away from raping these men is that he would offer his daughters instead. He offers them an alternative evil, perhaps even a worse evil.
And so we see that Peter is vindicated when he says that those who are like the people of Sodom are like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed, blaspheming about matters which they are ignorant of. And in this trial, it’s Lot who is clearly vindicated, and the citizens of Sodom are condemned. Every last man, young and old, great and small, all alike are complicit in this vile wickedness. Abraham talked the Lord down, despairing the city if he could only find 10 righteous people.
And here we see that, in fact, there is only one, Lot, and the fate of the city is sealed. So now the men press hard against Lot. Here we get that word again. They try to get past him and to break down the door. And as Lot is being pummeled, a hand reaches out and grabs his shoulder and starts to drag him. Could this be the end? But no, the door slams shut. Lot’s safe inside. The roles here now reverse.
Lot tries to protect the men, and now they spring into action to protect him. They pull him inside, they lock the door, and then, as icing on the cake, they strike all the citizens of the city with blindness so that they can’t find the door. And yet, even still, as they become aware of the divine nature of the visitors they’re dealing with, they don’t stop, they don’t relent in their wickedness, but they wear themselves out all night trying to find the door and to get in. They’re exhausting themselves in their single-minded resolve to do evil.
So here we see the first way that the Lord rescues Lot. The wicked pressed him hard for no other reason than that he loved righteousness rather than evil. But the Lord delivered Lot from the hands of the man of Sodom. But then more importantly, the Lord delivers Lot as well from the judgment that hangs over the city. The men finally revealed to Lot the reason that they’ve come. The outcry against this city has reached the Lord, and he has sent us to destroy it. And they urge him to gather his family, anyone who belongs to him in the city, and to bring them out to flee for his life.
And when he can’t convince his sons-in-law, it’s sort of strange. In verse 15, as morning dawns, he’s still in the city. So again, the angels urge him, take your daughters, the ones who are here, and your wife, and flee. And yet still he delays. Lot doesn’t listen to the angel, even as the storm clouds gather over the city. He lingers, and we don’t know why. But finally, the angels have to take matters into their own hands. They grab Lot and his family, and they bring him out of the city and set him down. And we read that this is done in the compassion, in the pity of the Lord upon him.
He refuses to let Lot perish along with the city, even as Lot delays and delays. And once Lot is outside the city, again, he looks across the valley to the mountains that promise safe harbor. And he thinks, I can never run all that way to the mountains on the other side of the valley. I’m going to be overtaken by the destruction.
So he pleads with the angels to let him not run so far and to settle even closer. And once again, the angels here have compassion on Lot. They grant his request. OK, Lot, go there. Get, just get going. Get out of here. We can’t do anything until you’re safe. And finally, Lot leaves. The compassion of the Lord has brought him to safety.
Even as the clouds open up and begin to rain fire and sulfur down upon the cities of the valley. Others are not so lucky. the citizens of the city, Lot’s sons-in-law, and now, even tragically, his own wife, who, for some reason, we’re not told the reason, but for some reason, she looks back, and she, too, is swept up in the destruction of the city, becoming a pillar of salt. And at the last, the camera cuts away to Abraham, who rises early to go out to the place where he had talked with the Lord and to look down from that vantage point upon the valley. You can imagine his heart sinking as he sees that this valley, which the day before had been the most fertile and verdant plain in all of Canaan, the place that Lot had been so enticed to go down to, to live, is now nothing but fire and smoke, a great mushroom cloud rising up to heaven.
And we read that all of this has happened to Lot, not even because he was particularly righteous. Lot was vindicated in the trial, but we must remember Lot had willingly gone down to live in Sodom, and he delayed over and over again while leaving. And so we read in the final analysis, verse 29, that it was when the Lord, when God destroyed the cities of the valley, God remembered Abraham and he sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow. The Lord rescued Lot for the sake of Abraham because Abraham had poured out his heart to God, praying for a stay of execution. That prayer though it did not save the city, was effective in saving Lot.
So now, again, let’s turn to consider our present situation here today and the many, many ways that the Lord uses this story to teach us today. Let me begin by reading from 2 Peter 2, which I alluded to earlier in the sermon. 2 Peter 2, beginning in verse 6.
If by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes, God condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly. And if you rescued righteous lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked. For as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard. Then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and who despise authority. So first of all, we see that God destroyed these cities 4,000 years ago to make them an example of the final judgment that is approaching, the day when all of the cities of this world, even our own city, will burn with fire from heaven.
As we discussed this morning, the sins of Sodom are only those which are common to all of humanity, to all of us. And that’s why the thunder clouds of judgment even now gather over our city. Our hairs begin to stand on end. The scent of ozone offends our nostrils.
But what’s on the forecast is no gentle spring shower, as in Genesis 2, when the Lord sent rain to water the earth and to shoot up sprouts. In fact, we even read in Genesis 19 that this is rain of fire and sulfur, which even destroys the very sprouts. foliage of the valley. How can anything survive the day of the Lord’s wrath, burning as it is like an oven? And some might be tempted to think that being inside of the church is enough to protect us from the coming storm, just as the roof of this building might protect us from some rain.
But Peter and Jude take great pains to compare the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah, especially to those false teachers who sneak into the church, spreading division, bringing the ways of the world into the church, encouraging those who do evil rather than those who do righteous. and ultimately leading people away from Christ.
So we should rest assured, as Peter says, that the Lord knows how to rescue his people from trials and from temptations. And he also knows how to keep the ungodly under punishment, even before the day of judgment and even within the church. But if you are here and you’re trusting in Christ, know that God will save you from trials, both in this life and from the final judgment. And if you’re here and you recognize now the wrath of God and your desperate need for salvation from the judgment that God has proclaimed against sin and illustrated so clearly for us here, then I urge you to turn to Christ, to call upon him, Ask Him to save you, and then to rest assured that the Lord hears everyone who calls upon Him. And He delights not in the destruction of the sinner, but in their salvation.
That’s why He sent Christ, to suffer judgment on behalf of His people, so that instead of judgment, we might receive mercy. And know that you who are to be saved from the coming wrath are not saved because of your own righteousness, just as Lot was only saved through the intercession of Abraham. So you too are saved only by the intercession of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The seed of Abraham, the greater son of Abraham, as we meditated upon this morning, who now always lives to intercede for us at the right hand of the Father. Because Jesus, the son of Abraham, faced judgment, he’s able to save us who would otherwise be perishing. So then, as we conclude, we should also consider the attitude that this text calls us to as we await God’s final judgment. I’d like to start with a small point, but one that we shouldn’t miss too quickly.
At the end of the book of Hebrews, The author alludes to Lot and Sodom, saying that, do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. And so we see here that hospitality, friendliness to the stranger, to the foreigner, to the needy, is at the core of the Christian identity.
As Christians, we join the ranks of so many of our ancestors in the faith, including Abraham and Lot, people who sojourned in a land that wasn’t their own, and even Jesus Christ himself, who said that the Son of Man had no place to lay his head. We join all those who have sojourned in earthly lands that were not their own, even as we ourselves along with them, though we might be citizens of this country and live with homes, and possessions and roofs over our heads as we all await the heavenly country that we are bound to. This is the default state of the Christian.
We live as citizens of another country. And make no mistake, the Bible describes our time away from our home, not as a vacation, but as exile. We’re refugees. Perhaps even in this room, there might be people who are refugees in some way or another. Living in exile, longing for your old home, a place here on this earth that you would go back to if only you had the opportunity. In our world, there are millions of refugees, people who have fled their homes for whatever reason and yet long to return. And if that’s the sort of attitude, the intent longing that the refugee can have. Here on earth, how great should our longing be for our home country of heaven?
We’ve never visited it, but we read so much about it throughout the pages of scripture. The place where sorrow will be no more, where a river of fresh water will cause fresh sprouts to arise from the ashes of the old cities. A river that will turn the brackish and polluted waters of our present world into fresh and life-giving waters, as the prophet Ezekiel described at the end of his prophecy. A river with trees growing along its banks that yield fruit with potent medicine that will heal all nations. And most importantly, not just a garden paradise, a jungle paradise, or something like that, uncivilized and pristine, but a great city.
Heavenly Jerusalem, where God himself, the Lord Jesus Christ, will meet with us as people and invite us to dine at his table as we reflect this week upon our upcoming celebration of the Lord’s Supper next time we gather. We anticipate that final fellowship. And that’s why it’s good news. It’s such good news that our Lord is coming soon. And so while we dwell on this earth, we must truly be waiting and longing for the return of Christ.
Peter says that Lot tormented his soul by the lawlessness and sensuality that he saw around him as he dwelled in Sodom day after day. And Jesus also used Lot’s wife as an example of just how quickly we are to flee when the end comes. When the destroying angel shakes you awake early in the morning and says, flee for your life, because the Lord has sent me to destroy this city. And there’s only one good response, and that’s to run, but to run away also rejoicing.
As the exiles did, we sing Psalm 126, rejoicing that the Lord is finally calling us home. And we don’t know why Lot’s wife looked back. Maybe she forgot something. Maybe she wanted to go back. She preferred the dwelling place, her, you know, the tents of Sodom to a life of sojourning away from the comfort. Maybe she even felt compassion for the mob that had just been banging down her door. But when the end comes, there can be no looking back.
And so we really must cultivate a kind of detachment, even as we dwell in this world, even as we work our jobs and pursue our hobbies and cultivate friendships, even friendships with non-Christians. We must have a kind of detachment, even from the good things of this life, the blessings, the temporary blessings that God has given us in this life, and even from, especially from the people who would tempt us away from Jesus Christ and towards sin. Now, of course, we are called to love our neighbors as ourselves, to seek peace with all as we prayed for earlier in our service. It’s not a bad thing to share deep friendships even with non-Christians. If any of you know me, you know that I, of all people, have many friends and colleagues who are not, or at least are not yet, Christians. We live in a world that’s common both to us and to our Christian, our non-Christian neighbors. And as we talked about this morning, God suspends his judgment. And while he does so, he has called us to live in this world, to seek the good of our relatives and of our friends, our fellow citizens, and all of our fellow humans.
But for all of that, Paul does make a very clear application of this principle of detachment in 2 Corinthians 6. where he holds up the example of marriage. A Christian shouldn’t marry a non-Christian. There’s a point, there’s some point at which friendly engagement with the world becomes a yoke, a weight that’s going to drag us down as we flee toward heaven and to pull us away from Christ.
And so Paul says, quoting the prophet Isaiah, and we read a similar thing in Revelation 18 as well, I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore, go out from their midst and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing. And then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty. Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God. That’s the language, language that’s echoed in Revelation that Paul uses when he speaks of the issue of intermarriage with non-Christians.
Now, perhaps you realize that on reflection, you are weighed down by your attachment to this world. You trust Christ for salvation, you love him, but you don’t want to leave this world quite so desperately as I’m making it out here from this pulpit. And so while I urge you, as Jesus did, to remember Lot’s wife, I do also want to close by reminding you to remember Lot, the one who tarried and delayed over and over again and tried to make his escape as short as possible, even as the storm was breaking. He didn’t want to flee so desperately.
And yet the Lord showed compassion to Lot. Even as he lingered, we read, the Lord showed compassion, pity to him. And when the time came, he severed all the bonds that held Lot back, grabbing his hand and pulling him away from the city. So rest assured, brothers and sisters, that the Lord’s not going to forget you on that great day. He’s going to bring you out one way or the other with a strong hand and an outstretched arm. He’s going to show compassion to you, not for your own sake, but for the sake of Christ, even as he showed compassion to Lot for the sake of Abraham. Let’s pray.
Lord, we remember the miracles and the judgments that you uttered. In reflecting upon this passage, we ask that you would grant us the clear vision of the heavenly things, the things that are stored up for us above, where you now prepare a place for us. We ask that you would make us good citizens of this country, though it is not our permanent home. And yet that you would also make us good citizens of the heavenly country, which is where our passport lies. And that when the time comes, you would lead us out from the destruction of the city. Until that time, though, we continue to lift up prayers for all people, knowing that you are a God who does not delight in the destruction of the wicked, but would prefer for them to come to saving knowledge of Christ.
And so we thank you so much for the salvation that you have granted to us who have heard your word and have responded in faith. We ask that you would grant faith to many, even in our day. That all those whom you call to yourself might be saved. We ask all of these things in Jesus name. Amen.