Lot and the Feast of Trumpets

So we do have a PowerPoint presentation this time around. We'll be connecting that in a moment. I can see the other TV there, so that's good. Do I have to push anything right now? Okay. There we go. As we know, the Feast of Trumpets is the beginning of God's fall feasts. With it, we have a glimpse of what is coming. It's going to be a reality.

That's why we shouldn't get caught up in worldly things, so wrapped up with what's going on with the politics and everything else in the world. Those things will also pass. We have more vital topics to focus on. What a privilege we do. Now, trumpets in the Bible are used to gather people up. It's an announcement of something that is coming soon. Notice, let's see if it's working. I think we're going to have to go ahead and do it manually. It might be too far. There we go. One more. Okay. Trumpets are related to God's feasts to be sounded to announce to the people to gather on that day. Notice what it says in Numbers 10. I'd like to read it from the New Living Translation.

Notice it reminds God of His covenant with His people. It is so important. God sees who is faithful and He blesses as a result. He remembers the covenant that He made with each one of us when we were baptized. Continue the next slide. Also, on these festivals, a blowing of the ram's horn called a shofar, which Jesse Appie blew at the beginning. Notice what it says here in Psalms 81, verse 3, in God's Word Translation. It says, Blow the ram's horn on the day of the new moon, on the day of the full moon, on our festival days. We know a lot of the feast days are either on the new moon or on the full moon. It just happens tonight that we have a new moon. We will get to the full moon in 15 days when we go to the feast. God has His calendar set up in this way with the moon as its main established. Here we are on the time of a new moon. You don't see the new moon now, but you'll see a little sliver and it'll grow in the next two weeks. Let's go on to the next slide. But it is in the New Testament where we see the direct relationship of the blowing of the trumpet and the return of Jesus Christ, which coincides with the first resurrection or the resurrection of those converted through all time. So if you're faithful, you will be resurrected with Abel, the first one who died in the faith. He was killed by Cain, but he was faithful following God. He was the first martyr of the church. And you're going to see Abraham, and you're going to see Moses, and you're going to see David, and you're going to see the prophets, and you're going to see the apostles, all of those in the New Testament church, and all those in the last close to 2,000 years. All of those are God's first fruits that will be gathered at this time of what symbolizes the Feast of Trumpets.

Notice, it says in 1 Thessalonians 4, 16, For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. You see how always the trumpet announces this.

And the dead in Christ will rise first, those that have the Spirit of Christ in them. Revelation 11, verse 15, in the Good News Bible translation. It says, Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, The power to rule over the world belongs now to our Lord and his Messiah, and he will rule forever and ever.

Notice just the timeline. It is set up at that time with that last trumpet that it's going to sound, and then everything changes. You know, all of the powerful countries of the world, all of those things, the power of military and all that's all going to fade away. It is Christ who's going to rule, and we're going to have peace, and we have joy, and we are going to realize and accomplish that human potential that is in every human being.

God did not create us to be failures. He created us to succeed in his kingdom, and these are the firstfruits of mankind that get raised up at that time. Can you imagine the privilege, the calling that God has given us?

But we see a very different world right now. The sign of the end times are all around us. It tells us in 2 Timothy 3, verse 1 through 3, New Living Translation, says, They will consider nothing sacred. They will be unloving and unforgiving. They will slander others and have no self-control. They will be cruel and hate what is good. We see more and more a rebellious society, a society that has forgotten God, the respect for parents, for those officials that are out there defending the nation. We are seeing a breakdown of society at this time.

We are warned in the Bible that in the end time there would be a marked decline of morality and an increase in violence. A century has passed of increasing wars. First World War, some 15 million died. The Second World War, over 50 million died. Now we've got power to blow the surface of the earth to smithereens. There is more money spent on building military weapons than ever before. Now they are using artificial intelligence, drones, autonomous robots, lasers.

We don't want to be part of a war like that. God told us that greed would become rampant. People would love money above all things. There would be lawlessness, infanticide, or even abortions. Now I'm reading the Economist magazine of this week.

It's an international news magazine. It's talking about how they are advocating that because of the COVID, there were a lot of young girls that were pregnant. They could make it to their clinics to have abortions. So now they're sending them the pills so they can just take it in their homes and get rid of the baby. That baby is a living thing. It is growing. It has a right to live.

And now you don't even have to go through the embarrassment of going to a place. Now they can send you the poison pills that will kill that little baby. And so, of course, the abortion rate is growing by leaps and bounds.

Presently, some of the world leaders are trying to stop this from just getting a mail order, a couple of pills, whenever you just feel, oh, I don't want to have the baby. Well, how about the baby? Does it want to die or not? Does it have a voice in this or not? So this is what we see more ungodliness, the gender wars that are going on.

In Luke 17, verses 26-30, it goes into the main subject of today. Luke 17, verses 26-30, I'll read it. It says, Jesus speaking, this is prophecy. It says, Anne, as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man. They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage. In other words, they just went along, had no clue they were living in the end times for them. The end times was the flood at that time. And they didn't pay attention to the warnings, to the message. And the flood engulfed the entire earth, wiped it clean, except for those aboard the ark and, of course, sea creatures and others that could survive.

In the water, it says, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Nobody was heating. Everybody was just going along, following the crowd, following society. Likewise, as it was also in the days of Lot, they ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built.

But on the day that Lot went out of Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. People of Sodom thought life is going to go on. No problem. Even so will it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed. It's going to happen this third time around. Not only in the flood, not only in Lot's day, but also in the end time.

Most people are not going to wake up, they're not going to do anything about it until it's too late. It's going to be very sad at that time. Believe me, nobody desires this. We're trying to get the message out for people to do something while they can. Let's continue the next slide. We have the example of Lot for us today.

What did he do in the midst of such perversions and evils? He afflicted himself before God. He would not change or accept the wrong lifestyles. In Philippians 2, 14-16 it says, That was one of my favorite scriptures as a young boy of 17. Basically, just two of us in the whole high school, several hundred kids, we were the only ones in the church.

We just felt very much intimidated by others around us. I just remember, we have to go forward. This is a wicked and perverse generation.

Notice what it tells us in 2 Peter 2, verses 6-8. It's on the slide here. It says, Yes, sir. We are like Lot. We listen. We see what's going on. And we are tormented by that. We are afflicted. And we just realize we need God to help save this world. To be the example of Lot, who truly felt sorry for those people, truly lamented and went before God in prayer, fasting, meditating, studying what scriptures he had at that time to maintain himself faithful before God. Notice the next slide. Let's review the story of Lot, an inspiring lesson for us today in the Feast of Trumpets. At that time, they had arrived into this land of Canaan. Abraham and Lot had flocks of sheep and cattle. And soon, there was not enough grassland for both of them. And so, Abraham told Lot to choose because they couldn't use the same grassland. They would just completely deplete.

And so, Lot chose Sodom. Notice the next slide. Genesis 13, verse 10. It says, Lot took a long look at the fertile plains.

The term for plain in Hebrew is kikar, of the Jordan Valley in the direction of Zor. The whole area was well watered everywhere, like the Garden of the Lord or the beautiful land of Egypt. This was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. So, in the last 20 years, a new site was discovered opposite Jericho on the eastern side of the Jordan River in modern-day Jordan. It was an archaeologist who read in the Bible the geographical clues and said, according to this, there should be something here in this area. And he went to it, and he found this huge mound that had been unexplored. And he's been excavating there for the past 20 years.

He discovered a huge city that shows a layer where it was completely destroyed and incinerated.

They clay shards partially melted to glass. In other words, from what they see, it was this blast of heated material that fell on Sodom. And it went up to 7,000 degrees to the point where even the ceramic pots were melted and partially turned into glass. You can only do that when it's extreme temperatures. They've never found anything like that in any of the other places in the Middle East.

The only place they have found it, that at least this archaeologist found it, is in the area of Los Alamos, where they dropped the atomic bomb.

And around that area, there's this melted glass, a green melted glass, just like what they found in this ancient place. They found the palace in the upper section. They also found the city gates.

Notice in Genesis 18, let's read a little bit about this account. In verse 17, it says, And the Lord said, when he visited Abraham along with two angels, he was on his way to punish Sodom.

Verse 17, And the Lord said, Shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing?

Since Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him.

For I have known him in order that he may command his children and his household after him, that they keep the way of the Lord, to do righteousness and justice, that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has spoken to him.

And the Lord said, Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grave, I will go down now and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry against it that has come to me. And if not, I will know. Then the men turned away from there and went toward Sodom.

But Abraham still stood before the Lord. So these two angels went on their way, but it was Abraham. And we believe that was one of the instances where the pre-existent Jesus Christ, as what is called the Word, he came down and he was speaking with Abraham. God the Father had sent him.

And verse 23, And Abraham came near and said, Would you also destroy the righteous with the wicked? He's also thinking about Lot, wasn't he? Suppose there were fifty righteous within the city. Would you also destroy the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous that were in it?

And as you know, the account, he went all the way in verse 32. Then he said, Let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak but once more. Suppose ten righteous, is what he's saying, should be found there. And God said, I will not destroy it for the sake of ten. Just ten in a city of thousands of people. So the Lord went his way as soon as he had finished speaking with Abraham, and Abraham returned to his place. He had chosen the area of Hebron.

Chapter 19. Now the two angels came to Sodom in the evening.

So the pre-existing Christ was invisible at that time. He was there, but he let the angels take care of this physical situation. And Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. So Lot was there. The gates were the place where you did business, where you also had judgments go through, decisions made. And so Lot saw these two men.

And he bowed himself with his face toward the ground, and he said, Here now, my lords, please turn in your servant's house, and spend the night, and wash your feet. Then you may rise early and go on your way. And they said, No, but we will spend the night in the open square. But he insisted strongly, so they turned into him and entered his house. Then he made them a feast and baked unleavened bread, and they ate. It was so quick, he didn't have time to put yeast in the bread.

Now before they lay down the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both old and young, all the people from every quarter, so this wasn't a small group. This was a representative. They heard about these two handsome men.

And Sodom had gotten so bad that immediately that roused the lusts of the population. That's how bad it had gotten. And they called to Lot and said to him, Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may know them carnally. In other words, they wanted to rape these men. That's how bad it had gotten.

Well, today, women can't just walk out at night very safely. It's a whole different situation. You never know what can happen nowadays. It's changed from what it used to be. And this is the way it had gotten there in Sodom.

And so then it goes on to say, verse 6, So Lot went out to them through the doorway, shut the door behind them, and said, Please, my brethren, do not do so wickedly. And he, as the Middle East, when you are a host and you bring somebody into your home, that person is more important than any other person. The hospitality above all is to keep those that you have taken in protected. And Lot was willing to sacrifice his daughters for the welfare of those men that he had invited and committed to that code of hospitality.

Thankfully, they didn't want the women. They had gotten so perverse, they wanted men on men. And so it says here, verse 9, And they said, stand back, then they said, This one came in to stay here, talking about Lot. And he keeps acting as a judge. Now we will deal worse with him than with them. So they pressed hard against the man Lot, and came near to break down the door. But the men, talking about the angels that had materialized, reached out their hands and pulled Lot into the house with them and shut the door. And they struck the men who were at the doorway of the house with blindness, both small and great. In other words, all the little ones, they had already been corrupted. Now remember, this was what ended up being the Canaanites. They were part of the Canaanites that God was going to have to remove. But Sodom and Gomorrah had gotten the worst situation than any other of the cities.

And they struck the men who were at the doorway of the house with blindness, both small and great, so that they became weary trying to find the door. That's the only way they could protect Lot and his family.

Then it says in verse 12, then the men said to Lot, Have you anyone else here, son-in-law, your sons, your daughters, and whomever you have in the city, take them out of this place? Do you know anyone else that is part of your family unit? Notice, it was pretty extended that they could be protected. That's why when God intervenes, he will also say, Do you have anyone that you can bring along that is part of your household, that is willing to go to a place of safety before God lets down the destruction, rains down the destruction.

He says, Do you have anyone?

And then verse 13, it says, For we will destroy this place, because the outcry against them has grown great before the face of the Lord, and the Lord has sent us to destroy it. So Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-laws, who had married his daughters. They had already become betrothed. In other words, they had not consumed the marriage, but they were already betrothed. And he wanted to save them.

And he spoke to his sons-in-laws, who had married his daughters, and said, Get up! Get out of this place! For the Lord will destroy the city. But to his sons-in-laws, he seemed to be joking. Isn't that the typical thing? When the time comes for the church to act, God will give the command. It is time to go to a place of protection.

And it will come. And how many will just say, Oh, that's crazy. Nothing's going to happen. But they will have the invitation. That's why it's so important to keep the faith. Give them an example. Give them instruction. They might save their lives, even not knowing what was happening.

When the morning dawn, the angels urged Lot to hurry, saying, Arise, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be consumed in the punishment of the city. Those were the only ones that obeyed, that believed. And while he lingered, the men took hold of his hand, his wife's hand, and the hands of his two daughters. We can go to the next slide.

The Lord being merciful to him because of Lot being faithful, maintaining the faith. That's why God intervened. He's not a respecter of persons. He was merciful to him, and they brought him out and set him outside the city. So it came to pass when they had brought them outside that he said, Escape for your life. Do not look behind you, nor stay anywhere in the plain. Escape to the mountains, lest you be destroyed. Then Lot said to them, Please, know, my Lord, indeed now your servant has found favor in your sight, and you have increased your mercy, which you have shown me, by saving my life. But I cannot escape to the mountains, lest some evil overtake me, and I die. Now this city is near enough to flee to, and it is a little one. Please let me escape there. Is it not a little one? And my soul shall live. And he said to him, See, I have favored you concerning this thing also, and that I will not overthrow this city for which you have spoken. Hurry, escape there, for I cannot do anything until you arrive there. See, the righteous have to get to the protection, to that place of safety at that time. Then God will act with the ungodly, with the ignorant, with those who have not received the calling from God. And then it goes on. It says, verse 23, The sun had risen upon the earth when Lot entered Zor, the city, the little town. Then the Lord rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, from the Lord out of the heavens. So he overthrew those cities, all the plain, all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground. But his wife looked back, Lot's wife looked back behind him, 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 toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain. And he saw, and behold, the smoke of the land which went up like the smoke of a furnace. And it came to pass, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities to which Lot had dwelt.

So it's important to have a good relationship with God, also for the welfare of the family.

There's a commentary by T.S. Scott that mentioned about Lot's wife, I think is important and relevant.

He says, contrary to God's express command, perhaps with the hope of returning, which latter supposition is favored by our Lord's words, quote, let him not return back. Remember Lot's wife. We read that in Luke 17. She was therefore instantaneously struck dead and petrified, and thus remained, too, after ages, a visible monument of the divine displeasure.

So, brethren, we are living in difficult times. We are being tested. It is time to put Lot's example of being, quote, oppressed by the filthy conduct of the wicked, for that righteous man, dwelling among them, tormented his righteous soul from day to day by seeing and hearing their lawless deeds. Yes, he couldn't avoid seeing all of that. He couldn't avoid hearing all of that. But what he could avoid was participating in it. And we have to say to all that filth around us and all the perversion, this is unthinkable. This is unacceptable. I will not go down that path. We need to stay close to God.

So, the last slide.

Brethren, this is what is waiting for us if we remain faithful. And as this Feast of Trumpets represents being raised up in the first resurrection and meeting Christ in the air to be trained and to govern under him for a thousand years. So let's remember the lesson of Lot and the Feast of Trumpets and put his example into action.