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Christ Community Chapel is a church in Hudson, OH, that invites people to reimagine life because of Jesus. Learn more about us at ccchapel.com.
Genesis 18:22 through 33.
So the men turned from there
and went towards Sodom.
But Abraham still stood before the Lord.
Then Abraham drew near and said,
Will you indeed sweep away the righteous
with the wicked?
Suppose
there are 50 righteous within the city.
Will you then
sweep away the place and not spare it
for the 50 righteous who are in it?
Far be it from you to do such a thing.
To put the righteous
to death with the wicked,
so that the righteous fare as the wicked.
Far be it from you shall not the judge
of all the earth do what is just.
And the Lord said,
if I find it Sodom 50 righteous
in the city, I will spare the whole place
for their sake.
Abraham answered and said, behold,
I have undertaken to speak to the Lord,
I who am but dust and ashes.
Suppose
five of the 50 righteous are lacking.
Will you destroy the whole city
for lack of five?
And he said,
I will not destroy it if I find 45 there.
Again he spoke to him
and said, suppose 40 are found there.
He answered, for the sake of 40
I will not do it.
Then he said, oh, let not the Lord
be angry, and I will speak.
Suppose 30 are found there.
He answered,
I will not do it if I find 30.
There.
He said, behold,
I have undertaken to speak to the Lord.
Suppose 20 are found there.
He answered, for the sake of 20
I will not destroy it.
Then he said, oh, let not the Lord
be angry, and I will speak again.
But this once suppose ten are found there.
He answered, for the sake of ten,
I will not destroy it.
And the Lord went his way.
When he had finished speaking to Abraham,
and Abraham returned to his place.
Genesis 19:27 through 28.
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.
Well, good morning, and
welcome to the weekly gathering of Christ
Community Chapel, if we haven't met yet.
My name is Ken.
I'm one of the pastors here,
and I'm really glad you're here.
And I'm glad to be here to spend some time
with you, to go through the passage
that we just heard read.
We are in the midst of a series
entitled Promises Made, Promises Kept,
and in this series
we are looking at the life of Abraham
in the Book of Genesis
to see the promises that are made
and kept in Jesus.
So we're gonna get started here
in a moment.
But before we do that, I want to look back
briefly to last week's message.
If you were here, you heard Pastor Joe
preach on God's faithfulness.
When we give up.
And I bring
that up because last weekend
was a big weekend for my family.
We had a family wedding on Saturday and
then a family reunion of sorts on Sunday,
and it wasn't a typical family reunion
because my family isn't a typical family.
We have a lot of brokenness,
a lot of conflict.
But on Sunday,
for the first time in 21 years,
I saw members of my family come together.
It was an amazing thing to see and such
such a testimony to God's faithfulness.
So when Pastor Joe says,
never stop praying,
nothing is too wonderful for God,
I say, Amen to that.
Amen to that.
All right. That was last week.
Let's talk about this week.
Well, in this passage, we see the Lord
preparing to address
the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah.
He's planning to destroy these cities.
And Abraham is interceding.
So I'd
love for you to follow along
as we work through this text together.
You can pull it up on your phone
and your Bible.
If you're using a Bible that we provide,
it's pages 12 and 13.
And again the passages
Genesis chapter 18, verses 22 through 33
picks up again,
chapter 19, verses 27 and 28.
And while you find your way there,
let me give you our three points
to guide our time together.
Here they are.
Number one, it's not what you'd expect.
Number two, it's worse than you think.
And number three, it's
better than you could imagine.
It's now you expect. It's worse
than you think.
It's better than you could imagine.
Let's start with that first one.
Not what you'd expect.
There are some aspects to this passage
that are a little curious, aren't there?
First of all, it's not necessarily
who you would expect.
In this passage.
You have Abraham,
who's just a few chapters removed
from being a moon worshiper
from a family of idolaters,
and now we see him
standing before God, the man
with a massive promise,
not who you'd expect.
It's also not necessarily
what you'd expect in this exchange
between Abraham and God.
It almost reads like a negotiation
with God seeming to change his mind.
It's a little odd.
I was an attorney for about a decade
before I moved to full time ministry.
And let me tell you,
Abraham, if he's negotiating,
this is not a good negotiating tactic.
Okay?
Let me tell you how settlements
don't work.
Hey, I'm going to pay you $50,000.
They agree. Okay, now, how about 45?
Great. 40.
30, right?
It's not a good negotiating tactic.
But then again, this isn't a negotiation.
I don't want us to miss this.
This is actually an appeal
to God's character.
Look with me. Chapter 18, verse 25.
This is what Abraham says.
Far be it from you to do such a thing,
to put the righteous
to death with the wicked,
so that the righteous fare as the wicked.
Far be that from you.
What's he saying?
God? This
you wouldn't do something like that.
You wouldn't.
You wouldn't put the righteous to death
alongside the wicked.
That's not who you are.
By the way,
as Abraham intercedes.
And I want you to miss,
this is personal for him.
He has family in Sodom,
his nephew lot, and his family.
They live there.
So as Abraham intercedes for the city,
he's thinking of his family.
And in fact,
God didn't need to even tell Abraham
what he was going to do,
but he decides to do just that.
In the preceding verses before the passage
you heard read, God makes that clear.
He is going to share this with Abraham
because God wants Abraham to know
who he is, wants to know his character.
Abraham is appealing to God's character.
But it might not necessarily
be what you expect in what happens next.
Because God, this God of mercy
and and goodness and grace,
that God destroys the city just levels.
It reduces it to rubble and ash.
What kind of a God would do that?
That leads to my second point.
It's worse than you think.
I'm just going to put this in simple
terms.
Sodom is an absolute horror show.
The stuff going on in that city
absolutely awful.
It's referenced in preceding chapters.
Wicked, great sinners.
The sin of the city is very grave.
And in fact, the passage
we didn't read that
sits between the passages that we did,
which we're going to get to here
in a minute, puts
the depravity of this city on gruesome
display.
And spoiler alert
God can't even find ten righteous people
in the entire city.
Not even ten, not even ten.
God's not having a bad day here
in wake up on the wrong side of the bed.
He's not being petty or arbitrary.
This city is a horror show
of violence, of sexual assault,
of depravity and God and His holiness.
He cannot and will not let that lie.
He must address it.
But it's not just the city.
It's not just a city.
It's a lot to
let me let me give you a profile of lot.
The man. All right.
So you know who we're dealing with.
All right.
Chapter 13.
Genesis says that
lot settled among the cities of the valley
and moved his tent as far as Sodom.
So he moved into the city of wicked
great sinners.
Most commentators believe that he was
a man of great influence in the city.
He didn't just live there,
he flourished there.
He was respected there.
When he received the angel sent
by God to destroy the city,
he takes them to his house,
probably to prevent them from
being sexually assaulted and killed, which
once they're at his place, this depraved
mob forms outside to do exactly that.
And lot, in a display of hospitality,
offers up his unmarried daughters instead.
Then, when he learns that the city's
going to be destroyed,
he goes to his future sons in law,
tells them, we got to get out.
City is going to burn. What do they do?
They laugh at him.
They laugh at him.
They don't even believe him.
That's that's
how compromised his testimony is.
They just laugh at him
and then it's time for him to go.
Lott himself lingers in this city.
They basically have to drag him out.
This is a guy who chose to exist
closer and closer and then finally
within the wickedness of the city.
And then when it was time to go,
he didn't want to.
That's a lot.
And it is easy,
and it is comfortable
to look at lot
as a spectator to his sin,
and just shake our heads.
The things that he's done.
But here's the really tough part.
It's not just the city, and it's not just
lot, it's you and it's me.
We are worse than we think.
I mentioned that I practiced law
for a while before moving to ministry.
I was a civil litigator,
so I didn't get into the criminal stuff,
but I saw plenty of awful things.
I saw theft,
broken promises,
I saw fraud, I saw companies ruined,
I saw pensions stolen,
I saw lives destroyed.
You know what I learned?
Our capacity for wrongdoing
really only limited by our circumstances,
by the opportunities that we have.
And our ability
to rationalize
and to self justify what we do is
just about limitless.
We are worse than we think.
And if you're honest,
you know that, don't you?
And right
here, right now, for some of you,
you can think of something you wish
you had never done that makes you cringe,
that makes your stomach turn
just thinking about it.
And we rationalize
and we justify and we make excuses.
And we pointed other people and we say,
well, at least we're better than they are.
Shoot, you might be doing that
with a lot right now.
But the things that live in your head,
that live in your internet
history, that live in your heart,
the things that nobody else knows about
but you,
what about those things?
What are the times we choose to just drift
along in the cultural current?
Looking like speaking like acting,
like spending.
Like the culture
in which we sit just like a lot.
So much so that when we finally do
take a stand, when we speak up,
we are disbelieved or just dismissed.
Just like a lot.
So much so that when we're
challenged to flee from our sin,
the thing that we're doing that
we know we shouldn't be doing,
we linger just like a lot.
Are we really so different?
Listen, there are so many voices.
So many voices, sometimes most loudly.
The voice right here
for each of us, telling us we're okay.
We're not okay.
We are worse
than we think.
And God and His holiness, he cannot.
And he will not let that lie.
He didn't in Sodom,
and he won't here and now.
That city worse than you think.
Lot worse than you think we are.
Worse
than you think that city faced judgment.
Lot was facing judgment.
We are facing judgment. What do we do?
Well, hang with me
because it does get better.
Okay, so that that's my third point.
It's better than you can imagine.
Better than you can imagine.
Let me ask you this question.
Why is Lott rescued?
Why does God choose to save this guy?
Two things going on here.
Two things mercy
and a promise. Mercy and a promise.
Let me show you in chapter 19, verse 16.
We didn't read this,
but I want you to see it.
This is what it says.
This is verse 16,
but he, meaning lot, 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.
Lot did not deserve rescue.
This guy's resume is filled
with compromises and mistakes
and some truly horrific stuff.
But God extended mercy to him nonetheless.
Mercy, but also a promise.
A promise
that God made to Abraham to bless him
and to bless all the families
of the earth, including his own offspring.
That number the stars.
God walking through the covenant,
all affirming this promise.
So then in chapter 19, verse 29,
so what it says so was that when God
destroyed the cities of the valley, God
remembered Abraham and sent lot out.
What did he remember?
He remembered the promise
Abraham, who's interceding for the city,
who's interceding for lot.
And then lot comes up underneath
this promise that was made to Abraham.
It's like an umbrella
that was extended over lot and his family.
Make no mistake,
lot being rescued has nothing to do
with his merit or performance
and everything to do with God's mercy
and God's
promise.
You could say, well, that's great for lot.
What does that mean for us?
I mean, Lord, had Abraham interceding,
he had the umbrella of the promise
God remembered.
Abraham sent the angels to yes,
destroy the city, but to bring lot out.
Yes, lot had mercy and a promise.
Friends, we have something so
much better, so much better.
We have God himself coming
in the person of Jesus, the only truly
righteous person that has ever lived.
The only person that can actually meet
the standard for escaping
God's judgment.
Joe talked last week about flipping
the script.
God loves to flip the script
while the script flips a bit here,
because in this,
in this beautiful inversion of the passage
and an incredible display of mercy,
you see Jesus, who's that one righteous
man, Jesus, who was judged like Sodom
so that the wicked could be rescued.
Like lot.
Jesus
the righteous, destroyed
for the sake of the wicked.
All of that sulfur and fire
that was brought down on the city
multiplied a thousand fold,
a million fold.
That's what came down on the shoulders
of Jesus on the cross
judgment, not for his sins, but for ours.
Not just for a city, but for every single
one of us, giving Jesus what we deserve.
Every thought, every word,
every action, every compromise,
every time we just drifted along,
every time we cut a corner,
every time we said it's
okay when it wasn't okay, son.
Jesus.
It's not on us.
It's on him.
Mercy.
That's mercy.
And then a promise.
What's the promise?
Simply this trust in Jesus and live.
Trust in Jesus and live.
Trust in his righteous life.
Trust in his death for your sins
and for my trust in his resurrection.
Proving that the promise is good.
We can rely on it.
We have,
in this series
reference Romans chapter 568.
It's a good passage.
I'm going to read it again this morning.
This is what it says.
For while we were still weak
at the right time,
Christ died for the ungodly.
For one will scarcely die
for a righteous person,
but perhaps for a good person.
One would dare even to die.
But God shows his love for us
in that while we were still
sinners, Christ died for us.
Christian, everything you've
thought you have said you have done,
Jesus has
and is now interceding for you
in the throne room of God the Father.
He's saying,
I took it as you put it on me.
It's not on them, it's on me.
And then he presents his finished
righteousness on our behalf.
Later on in chapter five of Romans,
Paul tells us that by Jesus's
obedience, many will be made righteous
because of Jesus.
In the eyes of God,
we are deemed righteous.
In the umbrella
of God's promise doesn't just extend
to lot and a few family members
to get out of a city alive,
it extends to all
who would believe for all time
to be in relationship forever.
Relationship with God the Father.
That's the promise.
As I was
preparing for this message,
I found myself thinking about
funhouse mirrors of all things.
Ever been to a funhouse?
They got those mirrors
you can stand in front of them.
They make you look very, very different,
don't they?
I like the skinny one.
You get in front of one
and it makes you look actually two skinny,
emaciated, wasted away.
You get in front of the next mirror
and you're jumbo sized.
And just like those two types of mirrors
can distort
our physical view of ourselves,
so too, so too,
we can have distorted views of ourselves
and of God.
See, some of us can think that we're
too far gone to be redeemed.
We've done too much,
or that were too insignia for God
to even give us a second thought.
It's like standing
in front of that funhouse mirror
where you're wasting away to nothing.
Some of
us have a pretty good view of ourselves.
Too good of a view of ourselves.
We think we're too good to need God,
or we've forgotten how much we need him.
It's like standing in front of that jumbo
sized mirror.
Let me speak to each of you here briefly.
If you're here
and you believe that you're too far gone,
or that you're too insignificant,
don't miss what God did here with lot.
Don't miss what God does time
and time and time again.
In the story of the Bible.
The people that don't deserve it,
that are too far gone.
Too insignificant.
The God of the Bible
is a God of thieves, adulterers,
murderers, refugees, rejects, pariahs.
That's the God of the Bible.
He's not just for other people.
He's for you.
He sees you.
He he knows you.
He loves you.
He sent his son to die for you so that
you could be in relationship with him.
You're never too far gone.
You're never too insignificant for him.
But you here today.
And you think
you're in good shape. Too
good to need God.
Maybe you've forgotten
how much you need him.
Let me just remind you,
the Bible's very clear on this.
No one is good enough.
No one safe for Jesus meets that standard.
And it took nothing
less than the death of the perfectly
righteous Son of God to pray,
to pay the price of your sin and mine.
So if you're prone to thinking
too little of yourself,
the mercy of God and Jesus speaks to you.
If you're
here and you think too much of yourself,
the price of the promise speaks to you.
Because it is worse.
We are worse than we think.
But the good news of Jesus is better
than we could ever imagine.
Mercy to the unrighteous
and a promise made and kept
through Jesus.
Would you pray with me?
Heavenly father, you are just so good.
The breadth of your mercy
is just staggering.
Jesus, what you chose to do.
Is unbelievable.
We stand in awe of that.
I pray for everyone here today.
That if
if they believe they're too far gone,
Holy Spirit, you'd be reminding them
God sees them.
He loves them. He sent his son for them.
They see the mercy of Jesus.
For those of us that forget
how much we actually need you, God,
we be convicted and humbled and stand
in awe of the price of the promise.
Pray these things in Jesus name.
Amen.