The Lord Knows How To Punish The Wicked And Rescue His People (Genesis 19)
Today, on the last Sunday of June, I want to give you encouragement from the account of Sodom and Gomorrah. I feel that encouragement is something that we need in a big way right now. But it likely seems odd that we would find it in the account of Sodom and Gomorrah.
We have a lot to celebrate right now. For years Christians and others have been praying, preaching, marching, writing, and fighting the wickedness of abortion in our society. And on Friday, that was overturned. And that is major cause for rejoicing. But this is not over. There are people all over the country marching in protest. And now every state has a decision to make concerning abortion. And there is not an inch of America that is not affected in some way by the culture of death that we will be fighting for years to come.
In 1995 Pope John Paul II looked around at the landscape of the West and said that it was a culture of death. And he was correct. He was speaking of the euthanasia, assisted suicide, and abortion. And as time has gone by, we have noticed that there are a lot of things in our society shaped by this culture of death. The destruction of families is part of the culture of death. It is not accidental; it is as purposeful as chopping a child into bits and putting him or her in a bucket.
One of the goals of Marxism, as put forward by Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx was the destruction of the nuclear family. This is seen clearly in chapter 2 of The Communist Manifesto. Women in America took up arms to destroy the nuclear family.
Kate Millet, one of the founding members of the National Organization of Women, said
“The complete destruction of traditional marriage and the nuclear family is the revolutionary or utopian goal of feminism.”
Feminst and historian Linda Gordon also stated that,
“The nuclear family must be destroyed and people must find a better way to live together.”
How much death and destruction has come from the destruction of the family? How much damage have these individuals done? Roe V. Wade itself was a part of the destruction of the family. Out of thin air it stated that the decision over whether a child lived or died was to be made by the mother and the doctor, completely leaving the father out of the decision. A man, married to his wife, had not right to protect his child from death according to Roe V. Wade. Through it children were aborted, and so was the nuclear family.
Why do I mention all of this?
Because fighting against the culture of death is not just about abortion. It’s about a whole lot of things. We are fighting against a secularist society that celebrates non-life giving relationships during the month of June, celebrates and fights for the murder of children, and champions the destruction of the life-giving and life sustaining nuclear family.
We celebrate the destruction of Roe V. Wade. And abortion is now to be fought on 50 fronts here in America. But abortion is only the sacrament of a secular society of death. We are winning battles in the fight against abortion, but are fighting against an enormous tide in our land.
But this morning I want to give encouragement.
Christians are currently being called backwards hicks who can’t read or write because of their stance on abortion. We are being called hatemongers and many other things. And it only reveals to us that there are people who want to protect the sacrament of abortion at all costs. But be encouraged, for God knows how to punish the wicked and rescue His people.
Notice what Peter says about Sodom and Gomorrah,
“…if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes He condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; and if He 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 despise authority.” (2 Peter 2:6-10a ESV)
Here is the encouragement that I have to give. The world is not spinning out of control. America is not devolving into chaos that God cannot deal with along with the rest of Western Society. God is not devoid of the wisdom or power to bring about perfect judgment and the salvation of His people. The story of Lot teaches us that that God knows how to rescue His people and judge the wicked. And this should give us confidence in the days to come.
When I turn on the news and I see how many people are getting shot in the streets and I see perversions being celebrated in parades and pushed on little children in schools, I feel as if everything is devolving into a mass of chaos. And it feels like I could get swallowed up in all of it at any moment. But the Lord knows how to punish the wicked and rescue His people.
When we look around at many of our families and see that chaos is reigning there as well, it is easy to get discouraged. We see members of our family imbibing the spirit of the age with all their hearts. We see divorce and no marriage at all running rampant in our families. We see the effects of fatherless homes and a lack of care for and we see people in our families getting sucked into the perversions of our day, it is easy to get discouraged and to live our life in fear of the chaos that is striking so close to home. But the Lord knows how to punish the wicked and rescue His people.
God Knows How To Punish The Wicked (Genesis 19:24-25, 2 Peter 2:6-10)
The first thing that we notice in the text is God punishing the wicked. It makes sense. It’s not every day that God’s wrath is poured down from Heaven in the form of fire and sulfur upon the wickedness of a region.
The express reason for this event was “the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah was great and their sin is very grave.” (Genesis 18:20) And the realization of how bad things were strikes us when we realize that there were not 10 righteous people in Sodom, or this would not have happened (Genesis 18:32). The “men of Sodom were wicked, great sinners against the LORD”, and the fire from Heaven was God’s Judgment upon them (Genesis 13:13).
We have seen in past weeks that he wickedness of the people was deep and pervasive. Lot knew how wicked the people of Sodom were and would not allow the strangers to stay out too late (Genesis 19:3). Lot knew trouble would come to them if they were outside after dark, like when people know not to go outside of certain parts of a city. Except here, the evil was all over the city. The problem was that the wickedness was so deep and pervasive that the wicked men of Sodom came looking for them, even when they were inside. And every man in town, both young and old came to do sexual harm to these strangers (Genesis 19:4-11). The perversion of Sodom was pervasive.
And this is what we see the rest of the Scriptures say about Sodom. Ezekiel tells us that there was pride and arrogance, abundance and lack of care for the poor, and perversion that reached the level of abomination being practiced there. Therefore, God brought justice upon them (Ezekiel 16:49-50). And when we read from the New Testament, the homosexuality of Sodom is singled out as particularly heinous (Jude 1:6-7).
And because of this, God wiped them out. God brought His justice to bear upon them. He turned Sodom and Gomorrah into a heap of ashes that would forever testify to the fact that God knows how to punish the wicked.
Not only does God know how to do it, but God knows when to do it (Genesis 19:13). Sodom already had wicked people, but the time for destruction had not yet come. And then, the time was appropriate. This is not unlike what we have already read in Genesis 15:16. Abraham’s offspring would wait 400 years to inherit the Promised Land and the reason was that “the sin of the Amorites” had not yet piled high enough for God’s Judgment to fall upon them. In both occasions, God waited for the precise time to deliver His justice.
God knows how to execute justice. And God knows when to execute justice.
When we look around and see that wicked people have brought about wicked things in this world and they are damaging person after person, we don’t take matters into our own hands. We trust that God will execute justice. And we trust that He will do it perfectly.
I believe that the wicked people of this age are doing irreparable and irreversible damage to people, oftentimes children, when they try to transition from one gender to another. But I don’t go and shoot up clinics where this is taking place. Why? Because I believe that God will execute justice perfectly and completely. I work to do what I can to make people aware of the horror and even to make it illegal, but I am trusting that the Lord will bring about complete and perfect justice.
Why is it that we do not go on a rampage when we have been treated unjustly?
When justice is not served, why do we not run off and serve it ourselves?
“Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”” (Romans 12:19 ESV)
To trust that the Lord will, in the end, bring about perfect justice is to have faith that God will make all things right.
Does that mean that we do not protect ourselves? No, I do not believe this is the case. Exodus 22:2-4 is one example of self-defense being okay. Self-defense is not revenge. Self-defense is protecting life. And we should be people who want to protect life.
Sadly, we live in a horribly wicked age. And in a horribly wicked age we must think through these things.
God is holy, and His perfect justice should strike us with a sense of awe and wonder. But it should also give us a sense of confidence. It should move us to trust that God will make all things right, even though the world look so very dim right now.
Sometimes these things happen immediately.
One day, I was working on the dock at the Post Office when an angry driver was griping because we were going to let him out on time. He wanted to leave early. (I would later find out, when his marriage blew up, that he had an adulterous affair on his route…which explains his desire to leave early…) He yelled and cussed at me. And I told him repeatedly that he had a time that he was supposed to leave and that I would not seal up his truck until the last bit of mail was in his truck. He continued to yell and cuss. When he started to threaten me, I chuckled. He turned around and threw the bar that went across the truck to hold stuff in the truck. Then he kicked the strap that was attached to the side of the truck. It wrapped around his leg and he fell on his face and rose with a busted lip and a bloody nose. I went inside, laughing of course, and told the supervisor that I did not hit him. I knew there was a camera on the dock and that the whole thing was likely on video. I’m sure the supervisor had a good laugh as he watched the video.
Sometimes justice comes immediately. But sometimes it doesn’t.
Sometimes the judicial system fails us and criminals go free. Sometimes family members tell lies and deceive people in order to get what they want. Sometimes friends deceive and betray. There are just so many things I could put here. But the point is, sometimes these deceivers and liars seem to flourish for a while. That is until God destroys them.
“A Psalm of Asaph.
Truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart.
But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped.
For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
For they have no pangs until death; their bodies are fat and sleek.
They are not in trouble as others are; they are not stricken like the rest of mankind.
Therefore pride is their necklace; violence covers them as a garment.
Their eyes swell out through fatness; their hearts overflow with follies.
They scoff and speak with malice; loftily they threaten oppression.
They set their mouths against the heavens, and their tongue struts through the earth.
Therefore his people turn back to them, and find no fault in them.
And they say, “How can God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High?”
Behold, these are the wicked; always at ease, they increase in riches.
All in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence.
For all the day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning.
If I had said, “I will speak thus,” I would have betrayed the generation of your children.
But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task,
until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I discerned their end.
Truly you set them in slippery places; you make them fall to ruin.
How they are destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors!
Like a dream when one awakes, O Lord, when you rouse yourself, you despise them as phantoms.”
(Psalm 73:1-20 ESV)
When we discern the destruction that is coming their way, we understand that they are not getting the best end of the deal. So, we trust the Lord and trust His Judgment.
God Saves His People Through Faith (Genesis 19:29)
Why did God save Lot?
Was it because of some good thing that Lot had done?
“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 had lived.” (Genesis 19:29 ESV)
God remembered the promise made to Abraham and rescued Lot.
That rescue was not based on anything that Lot had done. The rescue was based completely on God’s Promise.
This also helps us to understand one of the more confusing things about Lot. Lot was called righteous in 2 Peter 2:7-8. Why was he called righteous?
Because he, like Abraham, trusted God’s promise. Lot was remembered and rescued because God remembered the promise he made to Abraham. Lot was called righteous because he believed in the God of Abraham, that had called them out of the Land of Ur.
We only see a few snapshots of Lot’s life, and those aren’t pretty. But we don’t see the whole life of Lot. But what we know is that God rescued Lot because He remembered the promise made to Abraham. We know that Abraham was himself counted righteous because he believed God’s promise (Genesis 15:6). And we also know that is how we are counted as righteous as well (Romans 4).
Lot was not saved because of what he had done. And neither are you. We are saved by the grace of God through faith. And it is all because of the finished work of Christ.
God created the world and everything in it. And He created it all good. But mankind rebelled against God, brought all of creation into chaos, and corruption to the heart of man. We are now all born rebel sinners who are deserving of God’s wrath and justice. But God the Son took on human flesh, died on the cross and rose from the grave for our salvation. He took the sin and rebellion of all who would ever believe upon Himself and died in their place. He lived a righteous life that is credited to all who believe so that they are counted righteous. In short, all who believe are united to Christ and His death pays the punishment for their sin and His righteousness is credited to them. All those who believe have their sins paid for and are credited with righteousness.
The tendency is to look at this wicked world and think that we are better than them on our own. But that is not the case.
Where would I be but for the grace of God?
I am a wretched sinner in need of God’s grace and mercy. And without that I would rightfully receive His justice and wrath. But instead, I’ve been given mercy.
If you are hearing this today and are still in your sins, then I must inform you that this free gift can be yours if only you trust in Him. Stop ruling your own life and trust in Him and this salvation is yours. Repent, turn from ruling your life, and trust in the Savior, Jesus Christ.
God Rescues His People From Wickedness (Genesis 19:29)
God is the One who saves. God saved Lot from the Sodomites who surrounded his house (Genesis 19:10-11). And not only was this the case but Lot and his family were dragged out of the city when they wouldn’t just run away from the destruction that was about to occur (Genesis 19:16-17).
God is the One who rescued Lot. And because God rescued Lot, we know that God knows how to rescue His people from wickedness.
“and if he 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.” (2 Peter 2:7-9a ESV)
We feel a lot of pain right now. And a lot of you feel a good amount of concern over the world that your children are going to grow up in. Here is what I want to say to you right now.
God rescues His people from wickedness. But our rescue is not some, just by the skin of our teeth rescue. Our rescue from wickedness leads to the spread of God’s Kingdom to the world.
I do not believe that the world is going to end like the fall of Saigon with Christians barely making it out of this doomed world. I do not believe that evil will win. I do believe that evil has victories and that temporary darkness. And I believe that we are currently living amid some of that darkness. But that does not change the end. I believe that the Great Commission will be successful and that disciples will be made in all tribes, nations, and tongues. I believe that the “knowledge of the Lord will cover the Earth as the water covers the seas” (Habakkuk 2:14) and that all the ends of the Earth will worship Jesus (Psalm 22:27-28).
And so, this means that I believe we are to take a long view of this salvation as well. I believe that the rescue of God’s people from wickedness means that he rescues them to plant and to build. The work you are doing in your families right now matters. You are currently planting for a glorious future.
I do believe that God’s judgment is falling upon America right now. But I also believe that there is a revival of sorts, a reformation, happening among younger believers. They understand in new and fresh ways, the importance of the family and building something to pass on to the next generation. They’re not escaping from this wretched world, they are being saved from wickedness and worldliness and building God’s Kingdom here on Earth. And I think that is good and right.
We live in a world that is desperately wicked. But God knows how to rescue His people from wickedness. And year’s later all the nations will be rescued from wickedness through the preaching of the gospel and the power of the Holy Spirit.
“All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you. For kingship belongs to the LORD, and he rules over the nations.” (Psalm 22:27-28 ESV)
“After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”” (Revelation 7:9-10 ESV)
We’re not just escaping God’s wrath. We are saved to live for the Lord and to advance the gospel in our homes, in our church, in our city, in our state, in our country, and across the globe. The Lord knows how to rescue His people from wickedness. And we trust in Him as we go forth and make disciples of all nations.
Conclusion
We live in a dark world. The darkness seems to be all around us and we are tempted to huddle up in our little corners and hide from society. While there is a sense in which we need to do a better job of protecting ourselves and our families from the sin of Sodom than Lot did, we are not just taken out of this world.
We live in a world where we will be wronged by others. And we trust that God knows how to bring perfect judgment.
We were born into this world as a rebellious creature. We had earned for ourselves God’s wrath and justice. And we trust God’s promise of salvation found only in Christ.
And we live in a world where we are tormented by the wickedness that is all around us. We fear being sucked into it, or it rupturing our families. But we trust God’s ability to rescue us from wickedness. And we move forward discipling the nations in Christ because we trust God’s ability to rescue from wickedness.
In short, we walk confidently in this world because we trust the Lord. God knows how to judge the wicked and how to rescue His people. So, we rest in Him. The Lord knows how to punish the wicked and rescue His people, so we rest securely in Him.
R. Dwain Minor