The Sins of Sodom

There's a number of reasons why I picked the subject that we're going to cover today. Part of it is because of some news stories. I've been following closely this week. Just looking at whether it's television news, reading online articles, reading articles in major magazines, news week, reading articles in major newspapers, New York Times, and on certain things that are happening in society right now. As I was looking at it and I was reading it, it made me think of a number of things. One of the things it made me think of, and I'll tell you why in a few minutes here, it made me think of the story of Sodom. The story of Sodom. Sodom, of course, is an ancient city that God destroyed. It has actually become a symbol for something that's so evil and so vile that God destroys it. Even those who don't believe it's a true story believe it's an allegory about the punishment from God. Although most Christians today, or at least many Christians today, and I would guess it's most now, don't believe it actually happened because God wouldn't do anything that terrible. That's not the real God. That's some evil. So it's not really true. It's not really true. It's a misunderstanding of a volcano or something, and they think, well God did that. We know when we look at it that it is a true story. It is a message, and we will find this, you know, we all know this, we can look at this, oh that's a message for our society today. But there's in this story of Sodom the story of Lot and his family, and that message is for us. The story of Lot and his family is for us. The story of Lot, or of Sodom, is God's judgment on any group of people that eventually become so evil that he will not deal with their evil anymore. He will not bear with their evil anymore. We know there's coming a time in the future called the day of the Lord, the wrath of God, where God literally tells humanity, I won't deal with any of you anymore.

And the wrath of God is poured out on the entire earth, but that's in the future. That's in the future. What I want to look at as Sodom before it was destroyed, what was its issues, and look at Lot and understand that his story is for us. There's something we need to learn there. Let's go to Genesis 13. Let's get some of the backstory here. So we'll read a little bit of it.

Of course, Lot is Abraham's nephew. He's his brother's son. Verse 5 says of Genesis 13, Lot also, who went with Abram, had flocks and herds and tents. Now the land was not able to support them, that they might dwell together, for their possessions were so great that they could not dwell together. And there's strife between the herdsmen of Abram's livestock and the herdsmen of Lot's livestock. The Canaanites and the parasites were dwelled in the land. So Abram said to Lot, please let there be no strife between you and me, and between my herdsmen and your herdsmen, for we are brethren. It is not the whole land before you. Please separate for me, and if you take the left, then I will go to the right, or if you take the right, then I'll go to the left. And Lot lifted his eyes and saw all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere, and it's before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, and like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, as you go toward Zor, then Lot, in other words, the delta land of Egypt.

Then Lot chose for himself all the plain of Jordan, and Lot journeyed east, and they separated from each other.

Abram dwelled in the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelled in the cities of the plain, and pitched his tent as far as Sodom. But the men of Sod were exceedingly wicked and sinful against the Lord. So here's how we get introduced to this. And Lot and his family and his herdsmen. Now remember, he's the leader of a nomadic tribe. I mean, this isn't just a small family moving around with a few head of cattle. This is a nomadic tribe in a part of the world that still has nomadic tribes. There's still some parts of the Middle East where you'll see Bedouin tribes moving along around from place to place. This was a time period in the Middle East when nomadic tribes were all over the place. So he moves into this huge valley in which there's a lot of common land. In other words, this land is used by nomadic tribes. And then there are cities. And of course, around those cities would have been farmland.

And he ends up moving into Sodom. Sodom is an extremely prosperous city. I mean, there's the good life there. And outside of Sodom, there's plenty of area for his cattle, his sheep to eat, to be taken care of, and for his wealth to grow. Now, he's very wealthy to begin with. So he picks one of the most wealthiest places he had ever seen. And he said, that's where I'll go. And Abram said, okay. Years later, God comes and talks to Abram and says, what's going on in Sodom and Gomorrah so terrible that I'm going to send angels there to look at it?

I'm going to get a full report. And Abram has a discussion with God. Well, you would destroy it if there were 50 good men there, would you? And God says, no. And there's this back and forth. But what if there's this many? And what if there's this many? Finally, God says, no. I will do it. I will destroy it if there's some good men there. And that's how that conversation ends. So let's pick it up now over in Genesis 19. Genesis 19.

And let's start here in verse 1. Now the two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. Now that's interesting. He's sitting in the gate. The elders sat in the gate. The wise people sat. The important people sat in the gate. And part of their job in the Middle East, by the way, whether it was Israelite society or others in society throughout that time, was to be hospitable. Hospitality is very, very important in the Old Testament as it is in the New Testament, especially in the church. And that's something we're going to need to talk about here at some point. I have it as my list of sermons I want to cover. But the idea of hospitality is actually a very important teaching in the scripture. But he's there. He's obviously a leader in the city. He's at the gate, and he would sit there to take in new people as they came in and have them over to his house. Now to bring strangers into your house is really strange to us, isn't it? It's not there. It's not in Middle Eastern countries today. I've talked to many people who've been in Jordan and where you'll start to talk to someone on the street and they say, oh, you have to come over to my house tonight. They literally go over to their house and they have a meal for them that night. They don't know them. They just talk to them on the street. Or you go into a little merchant's place and you talk and you buy something and you've got to come over to my house tonight and they'll have them over for a meal. Now you and I would never dream of that. Can you imagine being at Walmart and talking to someone for five minutes and saying, you know, come over tonight. My wife makes a great lasagna, right? That still happens today in a part of the world where hospitality is considered a virtue. He's waiting for people to come by. It says, and when Lot saw them, he rose to meet them and he bowed himself with his face toward the ground. And he said, here now, my lords, please turn into your servant's house and spend the night and wash your feet that you may rise early and go on your way. Now we don't know if this point he knows that they are angels. He sees them as important men, probably the way they're dressed. There's something about them. So we don't know. He doesn't call them angels, but we don't know what he knows at this point. 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 and he made them a feast and baked on oven bread and they ate. Now, before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both old and young, all the people from every quarter surrounded the house and the church. Now, this isn't just a small group of people. This isn't some gang. You know, we were talking before services about when we lived in Houston. My wife and I one time, we were downtown Houston and we'd left a church event and it was late at night. And we turned down an alleyway and probably six, eight guys came out. It's like, oh, this is their territory and we were in their territory. But this isn't that, okay? This is a huge mob from all over the different quarters of the city. They come and they surround the house.

And they called to Lot and said to him, where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out that we may know them carnally. In other words, we wish this isn't something like we would like to get to know them and have a relationship with them. They wanted to have a gang rape. I cover the... This is not something for little kids, okay? What they wanted to do here is atrociously violent. This had nothing to do with sexual attraction. This is violence, which is what most rape is. Not all, but most. It's just an act of violence.

And they wanted to do it with hundreds of people involved. In other words, you don't survive this. You die. But it's what they wanted to do. Now, this gives us an idea of the level of evil that permeated Sodom's society. And of course, Lot begs them, you can't do this. You can't do this. Now, we're going to get a little insight into a problem Lot had. Now, Lot is called righteous in the Bible, but Lot had a problem that God had to deal with here. So Lot went out to them, to the doorway, shut the door behind him. So he faces the whole mob by himself. So, guy has some courage here. Please, my brethren, my fellow citizens, because he lived there. So, you know, my brother, my fellow citizens, do not do so wickedly. See, I have two daughters who have not known a man. Please let him, me, bring them out to you, that you may do to them as you wish. Only do nothing to these men, since this is the reason why they have come under the shadow of my roof. Why would he do that? You know, as a father, that's almost inconceivable, is it? That's almost inconceivable. But he had taken in two men who he now was morally required to protect. And there's something that's happened a lot that he doesn't even know. He's become affected by Sodom. He's lived in Sodom enough. He's become affected by it. And you see, the value of those two men's lives was more important than the value of two women's lives. He's making a moral decision, I've got to lose somebody here. And I promise to protect them, take my daughters, you know, maybe they'll survive. It is a horrible moral dilemma he's in the middle of, which is difficult for us, but we don't understand the custom. We don't understand that custom. They're requiring of hospitality, which you now become the protector of those people. And he may have known they were from God. I mean, they'd had some conversations at this point. These weren't just fellow Sodomites, okay?

But it's inconceivable the moral decision he makes in this moral dilemma. Why would he do that? He did not know how much he'd been affected by it.

Because one of the main problems of Sodom is the devaluation of the value of human life. Human life had been devaluated. It had no value. Excuse me. The result was he's making decisions of values, and he's trying to do this. Their response is very interesting. Verse 9, and they said, stand back. Then they said, this one came in to stay here, and he keeps acting as a judge. Now it would deal worse with you than with them. They said, you know, you came here, and all you do is tell us that we're wrong. All you've done ever since you've lived here is act like a judge on us. You judgmental. You tell us we're wrong all the time. We're not obeying God all the time. So guess what? We're coming in your house. We're gonna do whatever we want, and then we're going to do worse to you than we're gonna do to them. And it says they pressed him up against the house, and then the two angels came out and blinded everybody. Blinded everybody. That tells us something about Sodom. He was appalled by the evils of Sodom. He was not afraid to stand up and say, you're wrong, but he could not recognize that he had actually become tainted by it. He had actually become tainted by it. In a way, he didn't recognize. He now, arguing the value, what is the value of human beings? Well, these human beings are of less value than these human beings. I have to save some human beings here. How do I do that? Once again, that's a hard question, too, isn't it? People have to make those decisions sometimes.

Two people are dying. They go to the emergency room at some little hospital, and they can only save one. How did he make that decision? I don't know. I've never had to make that decision. But those decisions are made all the time. He's faced with that. How do I, who do I save here?

The angels say, gather up your family. We're getting out of here. It's obvious there's not enough people here to save. He goes to the two men that are, his girls are betrothed to. They're called his sons-in-laws, but they're not married yet, but they're, they're betrothed. They're, they're, they're going to get married. And they both think he's telling a joke. They think it's hilarious. They're not going. And of all the people of Sodom, the only ones that leave is Lot, his wife, and his two daughters. That's it! Now, you think everybody would be shocked since everybody, the only people that are seeing right now are the people that are there at that point. Now, we don't know how long that blindness lasted, but it's obviously something that's a trauma that's happened on a huge part of the population. They were blinded. They could not see. There's power here. And Lot and his wife and his two, two daughters leave. They leave. But understand they leave everything. What do you carry? A few things? Oh, look, I got a bag of coins, you know, that we use in Sodom for currency. What good is that? How much food can you carry?

What can you do? Whatever little bit they carried out wasn't much. How many different pairs of clothing do you take? How many shoes do you take? They fled. And Lot's wife said, but it's so good there. They had it good in Sodom. I mean, if you're an elder sitting at the gate, you're also someone that's got some influence. You've got wealth. We know he was wealthy. He was wealthy before he ever went to Sodom. He's wealthy. They probably have a really nice house. The fine furniture. They're living the good life, and they're the only people in the city that even remotely obey God. And they obey God. But leaving that comfort was harder than they thought. And Lot's wife tried to go back. At least she looked back. She desired to look, and God killed her. Now, it seems like a negative story. In the end, it's not.

But let's talk about for a minute here some of the problems that they had.

This devaluation of human life. Now, ever since Cain killed Abel, human beings have devalued other human life. History is really the same stories told over and over and over again. You know, slavery has been a constant in human history. Now, there were different reasons for slavery. In the Middle Ages, Muslims and Christians enslaved each other because they had wars all the time. And if they went into a town, they'd just make everybody a slave. So, if you would have gone to certain parts of Europe, you would have had Muslim slaves. All the Christians had Muslim slaves. If you would have gone to the Middle East, you would have had Muslims and they had Christian slaves.

Some historians now believe that the numbers may be in the millions between the two.

Slavery has always been there. And why is there slavery? Because my value of my life is more than the value of your life. Sometimes it's the color of the skin. Sometimes it's the next tribe, right? I mean, Africa was always full of slavery. Why? Well, the next tribe.

So, sometimes they're just... Or the American Indians, you know, they had slavery. It always had to do with they were raiding each other. Constant raiding. And if you happen to capture some 15-year-old girl, she came back and became your slave. Or you married her off to somebody in the tribe. That happened all the time. Why is there slavery? That's what's so interesting about the book of Philemon. I thought about giving a sermon on that sometime.

In the Roman Empire, everybody had slaves. Had nothing to do with race or religion. It had to do with we conquered you, so we can do with you, whatever we want. Why? Because we're better than you. Our gods are better than you. And in the book of Philemon, that's why we're going through the book of Acts, by the way, in the Sabbath Bible studies. They faced all kinds of problems they didn't know how to deal with, just like we do today. And they struggled with it. It took them decades to figure out what to do with slavery. And Paul fixed it in one letter. He said, you must treat him, your slave, like a brother. Well, then there can't be slavery.

Not in the way that is traditionally done. Because why? Slavery based on, I value me more than I value you.

So we look at our country, we say, well, we've done away with slavery. Good. We live in a country where all men are made equal. Yeah. Now, we say that, but in the last, less than 50 years, the low figure and the high figure is that in this country, we have brutally murdered 40 to 60 million unborn babies. The Nazis would be amazed at the efficiency. Absolutely amazed at the efficiency. It's so clinical, you and I don't even think about it. Right? I mean, most of the time I drive down the road, I'm not thinking about abortion. You know, if I'd been driving by the smokestacks of Auschwitz, I would have been knowing this is bad. We don't think about that.

Yeah, well, we're the righteous nation. 40 to 60 million. Oh, well, you know, Chinese have killed a whole lot more. So I guess they're the bad guys, because we haven't killed as many as the Chinese.

And of course, that's been in the news lately. Realize this big brouhaha about abortion, if the Supreme Court over rules or supports that what is it in Mississippi? The Mississippi law does not do away with abortion. It says that you can't do it after 15 weeks. Oh, once that baby's almost four months old, you can't kill it. If it's two months old, you can kill it. They're not stopping abortion. They're not stopping abortion at all. The devaluation of human life has just reached absolute... it's a joke, the argument, in a way. I mean, it's good, it actually at least stops some abortions in Mississippi. Of course, they'll just go to Louisiana.

That was in 2017. The CDC was so excited, because abortions in the United States were less than 600,000. And then they found out that they didn't include California, Maryland, and New York, where in New York City, about a third of all pregnancies are ended in abortion.

See, we don't even... Oh yeah, we value life here. No, we don't. It's a charade. You know, so we have a Supreme Court justice that compares the fact that they ...fetuses respond to trying to be aborted to a dead person's nerves reacting after death, and can't tell the difference between... Yeah, when a person dies, not all cells die immediately.

That live cells of a live... total live person is the same as a dead person who has a few cells still reacting in their foot.

I read one article in the New York Times where the person said, this is such a horrible idea because...

I guess some have said, well, why don't we just, you know, have those children put up for adoption? And there was two reasons why. One, the children may be adopted by a bad family, so it'd be better we kill them the first... that won't happen, which makes them a child, by the way, makes them a person. We kill them so they won't be adopted by a bad family. Well, if they're just massive cells, that makes no sense. And secondly, if the woman carries that baby for nine months and then gives birth, she goes through trauma giving up that child. Therefore, it's better to kill the child. And I thought, how low can we get? It's better to kill the child that I don't have trauma, so I'll kill the child. Why don't we do that at age five?

If that's the argument, I have trauma, why not kill the child at age five? The devaluation of human life in this country is as bad as Sodom. We've just sterilized it, so we don't recognize it. What other problems did I have? The sexual freedom. The absolute sexual freedom inside Sodom. We live in a country. Now, God forgives sexual sins. Homosexuality can be repetitive. Adultery can be repetitive. But that's not what Sodom was all about. Sexual freedom was a right. We're a mob of people. We're going to rape a couple guys. Send them out. There's no police to stop them. There's no elders from the gates saying, oh, you shouldn't do this. It's accepted as the total sexual freedom. And when Lot says no, they say, we're tired of you judging us.

And how many times do you hear that? How dare you judge me because I do whatever.

And now we have transgenderism, which I'm just going to flat out say, what's weird about that? I can't find, of course, they didn't medically have the capability. I mean, you'll find homosexuality throughout history in almost every culture.

You know, the royalty of some of the nations of Europe were famous for that. The average person didn't even know what it was. Um, there is no, throughout history, the promotion that you could change your sex into another sex. I can't find it. It may be there. It may be there, but I can't find it. Of course, they didn't have the capability of doing it.

And of course, you can't do it. Your DNA stays the same. And of course, you can't do it. Your DNA stays the same. Your DNA stays the same. So we have devaluation of human life, and we have sexual freedom.

Those are the problems, the sins inside of that we see just so obvious. But you know, there's other things that Sodom is condemned for in the Bible. See, right now we can say, oh, good. Yes, yes. I feel like Lot standing up and saying, no, you know, these things are evil. These things are wrong. And we can look at Sodom and say, yes, our society has elements like that. But you know, there's other things in the Bible Sodom is condemned for. Things that are a little more subtle, maybe, that we need to be aware of, that it doesn't be, that we don't compromise in the way that Lot did.

Now, fortunately, God saved him, but he was headed down a bad path. Let's go to Ezekiel. Ezekiel 16. Judah and Israel, the northern Tep tribes have already been destroyed. And God sends Ezekiel, in this case, specifically to Jerusalem, and to tell the people that he is going to punish them if they don't repent. And he gives them a whole series of things that he marks out and says, these things are really wrong.

Now, if you read the whole chapter, really the main point of the chapter is they're wrong religion. And as I've said before, remember, ancient Israel and ancient Judah never gave up the worship of Yahweh. They just mixed it with paganism. You could worship Moloch and Yahweh. You could worship Baal and Yahweh. That's all they did. They mixed it together so they could say, but we worship you. What's your problem? There's a couple places. There's even instances where God says, you asked me, why are you upset with me?

And Malachi, he says that numerous times. And the Lord said, why are you doing this to us? Or the people said, why are you doing this to us? And then he tells them why. In Ezekiel, though, he sent to tell the people of Judah, your religion is so bad.

It's such a pretend religion. And yet you were chosen by God to worship him that God was going to punish Judah. Now let's pick it up in verse 46. So 1646. Your elder sister is Samaria. Now, Samaria was the capital of Israel. Israel has already been destroyed by the, at this point, had already been destroyed by the Assyrians. So he says, you know, your capital is Samaria, not Jerusalem. That's a very stern statement because they knew why God had destroyed Israel. He had told them, he said, all these prophets, they'd written all these things down and Samaria had been destroyed. Your elder sister is Samaria, who dwelled with her daughters to the north of you.

And your younger sister who dwells in the south of you is Sodom and her daughters. Now Sodom had been destroyed too, but he said, you know, there's no difference between you and Samaria and you and Sodom. So here he tells Judah, in my mind, you're as evil as Sodom. Now we do know, there are all kinds of things going on. There was sexual promiscuity going on, and this idea of sexual freedom. We do know that they were sacrificing children to Moloch. Judah has become a pretty terrible thing, our place, just like Israel had become.

He says, you did not walk in their ways or act according to their abominations. But as it is, now he says, wait a minute, okay, you didn't do as bad as Sodom, or you didn't do exactly what Sodom did. You're like Sodom, but you didn't do exactly what Sodom did, as if that were too little. You became more corrupt than they in all your ways. He says, okay, you didn't do all the things Sodom did, but you're actually worse. You're worse than Sodom.

As I live, says the Lord God, neither your sister Sodom nor her daughters have done as you and your daughters have done. Why? Because God had given them miracles. God had given them leaders. God had given them the temple. God had given them, I mean, all kinds of things God had given to them. He never gave the Sodom. And he says, because of that, you're worse. Look, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom. So let me give you some lists, God says, of some of the things that Sodom problems they had. And then he lists pride. They were a proud people. They were proud people who probably thought their military could save them from anything. They were proud people who thought their economy was so great, nothing could bring them down. They were proud people. And it's interesting that Lot played in the politics of the place. It almost destroyed him. It almost destroyed him.

Because you also have fullness of food. This is the way you're like Sodom. You have plenty to eat there, Judah. You are really blessed. I gave you that land because it is really fertile, and you can grow stuff there. And you have lots of flocks, and you eat well. Oh, my, we worry that there may not be enough cans of spinach on the counters in Kroger this week. They'll be there next week, but you know, a whole week without cans of spinach?

We have fullness of food. He says abundance of idleness. So they have this pride, this self-sufficiency, and then they have lots of spare time. They have all the entertainment you could want. I mean, Sodom must have been the sexual entertainment capital of the world at the time, right?

You think downtown Nashville on a Friday night has anything to do with the entertainment?

That might be a little bit like Sodom?

Maybe just a little bit like Sodom.

He says, and you do not help the hand of the poor and the needy.

Now, in this country, we do have all kinds of programs to help the poor, but they fail a lot of times because why? There's lots of money that go into them. That money must go a lot of different places.

That money's got to go a lot of different places because there's still a lot of poor.

And yes, some poor, it's their own fault. The Bible talks about that. But you know, we can't use that as an excuse never to help people. We can't. At least according to what God says here.

He says, you're haughty.

Here in verse 40 or 50. And they were haughty. Thank you, because I was lost here. They were haughty. I committed abominations before me. Therefore, I took them away as I saw fit. He says, you know what I did to a sodom? He says, I took them away. And he's telling you to your haughty. How does an interesting word, the Hebrew word in the English word are very similar. It's it means that you look on others. It's absolute disdain because you're absolutely sure you're better than them.

And these abominations. Abomination is a powerful word in Hebrew. It means literally something that's so disgusting, you can't even stomach it. And God calls a lot of things abominations in the Bible. And he tells you, you're just full of things that make me disgusted. How many things are we in our society? Oh, do it makes God disgusted. Makes God, the other way he could put it, makes me sick. Not that God gets sick. Now there's still, okay, I got to stop because people misunderstand. There's still a lot of good people in this world. There's still a lot of nice people in this world. I have neighbors who are nice people. Now, whether they're righteous or not, I have no idea. But they're nice, good people. I enjoy saying hi to them. We enjoy talking. My one neighbor who is a Lutheran going to a Baptist church loves to talk theology with me. Well, most of the time I just sit there and smile and shake my head. Or, well, I'm not going to talk theology. That's not exactly what the Bible says, but he doesn't listen much. He just talks. So we have a good time. He does. After a while, I was like, man, okay.

But they're decent people. He's not going to lie, cheat, or steal from me. I know that, right? I know at least there's a character there I can relate to. So I'm not saying all.

Everybody you go to work with is evil. Everybody you go to school with is evil. I said, no, no, I'm not saying that. All your neighbors are evil. I'm saying, though, we have a society that's becoming evil. Not that it was ever really, really righteous. We live under some strange belief that there was a time when the United States was a righteous place. Now, God blessed this country. I tell you what, any country that ended up with the English Bible was blessed. The English Bible spread all over the world. And the English Bible, wherever it went, people were blessed. The Germans didn't produce enough because they're the first ones that turned the Bible into the common language, but they didn't produce enough. It was basically for Germans. They didn't care about anybody else. Besides, not too many people read German outside of Germany and Austria. Belgium, I mean, there's forms of Germans. Switzerland. But actually, those people were blessed. There were things that happened in those countries, but not like the English Bible. Wherever the English Bible went, people were blessed.

And the people that came here brought English Bibles. And there were blessings. There was a lot of evil this country did, too.

But I'm not going to say there wasn't good. There was good. The United States has done more good than any empire in history, because it's an empire.

It's done more good than any empire in history, but it's done its share of evil, too. And we'll continue to do so. And we're watching it collapse. Kim said, why are you going to say such negative things? Because we know what's happening, and there's something spiritually happening, too. Over the last two years, it became more and more obvious that something spiritually is happening. And just the way people think and feel, something spiritually is happening. So we have to be aware of that.

And so we're going to live in a country that's more and more like Sodom. And I'm just reading dozens of articles and watching news stories on the abortion thing. I just drove it home. Just drove it home. Although I did see something—I can't even remember what station it was—I turned on the news, and I kind of flipped through it and it was like five o'clock. Who's covering the abortion stuff? And I stopped at one, and there was a newscaster with these Bible open reading from Psalms. You know, I was fearfully made before I was even born. You knew me. You formed me when I—you saw me when I was formless. I mean, all this, you know, that shows that God sees that fetus in utero as alive, as a child in his image, forming. And I thought, a newscaster's doing that?

And he was.

I don't know if he has a job today, but anyways, he was doing it.

You know, it's interesting if you go to Isaiah, Jeremiah—I wasn't going to go through all those things to places today—but in both Isaiah and Jeremiah, Judah is referred to as Sodom. I destroyed Israel because of what they became, and I'm going to destroy you because you're becoming Sodom. And in Isaiah, he ties it in directly to their religion. He doesn't bring out the sexual issues. He doesn't bring out some of those other issues. He just brings it into their religion. But they had mixed so much paganism in. And you know, we used to think there was a lot of paganism and Christianity back in the 1970s.

Wow. Compared to today, that was not—I mean, today, the paganism that is mixed into Christianity is overwhelming. And the amount of people that are holding that back, as far as some people and some Protestants and some other groups are trying to hold that back, they're just getting overwhelmed. How much have we compromised and not even know it? You know, two weeks ago, when I talked about the parable of the ten virgins, the whole church goes to sleep. Now, I'm not saying we're at the very end of time because there's a lot of things going to happen before Christ comes back. But I tell you what, it could all happen real fast. I have to say that. Now, I don't know.

It wouldn't take much. It wouldn't take much. It's all God's timetable, so I can't tell you dates. It's not possible. If I did, I'd be a false prophet, so I can't go down that route. I can only say that I can't imagine what would cause this country to repent and change. It's in a direction that is not reversible. All you have to do is study history, all civilizations, all countries, everybody gets in something and very, very, very seldom will you see it get reversed. And there's never been an empire with 330 million people headed in one direction, which is chaos and civil war if it keeps going. I saw one in my studying all this. There was one, I guess he was touted as some great conservative. I can't remember who he was. Who said that the United States needs one religion, a Christian religion? I thought, yeah, whose version of Christianity do you want? Sure won't be ours, I can tell you that. That's just as scary as the other things. Just as scary as the other things. So our solution is we'll make everybody, I don't know, Catholics, that'll solve it. We'll make everybody Protestants, mainstream Protestants. Of course, most mainstream Protestants have no problem with transgenderism, homosexuality, or abortion. So, I don't know what gets solved with that. Let's look at and make something positive out of this. 2 Peter 2.

I just couldn't, you know, abortion makes me upset anyways, but I just watched and read so much this week, I thought I got to talk about this. Because I have to admit, I can go weeks and not think about abortion. I'm not saying you should be thinking about abortion all the time. I'm saying, how can we become calloused? Can we become calloused? The evaluation of the human being. That will start to tell in a lot, a lot of ways over time.

I remember there's a book, oh, it must have been 15 years ago now, by a top man who was a doctor who's considered a great expert on ethics. And I can't remember the man's name or the book, and that's a shame because I... No, no, this he actually said that, are you thinking of William Bennett? Yeah, no, this guy said that, actually I have one of his books, um, that a baby really, until the brain develops enough that there's really conscious thought, it's not a viable human being. And that was months after birth. So, therefore, killing a baby in the womb is no different than killing it for like up to three months old. Therefore, we should be allowed to kill babies up to three months old.

They do partial birth abortions now. That baby's alive. You have to keep it alive to harvest its organs to do the research that they do.

See how it's... if you devaluate life here, eventually you can kill babies. I tell you what else you can do is you can kill off us old folks, too. We're pretty useless for society.

There's a lot of directions that can go in. Or it could just mean everybody's mean. You know, you see on Facebook, well, I got COVID and you'll see the, and I'm against masks or I'm for the masks. And both sides will say, well, I hope you die. I've actually seen that. I hope you die. What do you mean, I hope you die? This is a human being. I hope you die. That's that kind of mean-spiritedness that happens when other human life is devaluated.

2 Peter 2.

Peter says in verse 4, he talks about how God did not spare the demons. The angels who sinned, he punished. And at Noah's time, he killed everybody but eight people. And then verse 6, he says, and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them to destruction, making them an example to those who afterward would live ungodly. Sodom was destroyed as an example for human beings to look at all the time. God will only, God will put up with evil. God is a remarkably patient. And there's a point He will say no more. And that time's coming when Jesus Christ comes back. That's what the day of the Lord is when God pours out His punishment on the whole world. And that's going to come. Not a lot of things have to happen before that, but it's coming.

He says, making them an example to those who afterward would live ungodly. And here's the positive part. Verse 7. And delivered righteous what, who was oppressed by the filthy conduct of the wicked. He was oppressed every day, even as he sort of compromised some. He was a man who saw God's way, lived in an entire city where nobody ended up following God, but Him and His two daughters, who we probably had to make go with Him. That's it! That's all that followed God. He even lost His wife. Who was 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. See, we look at Him as, wow, what a compromised man, willing to give up his daughters. And what it says here, what Peter says, realize He was going through constant torment by living in the world that He was lived in, because He wanted to obey God. And yes, He had become a bit tainted. God saved Him, by the way, for making that decision.

I said, now you can't decide which life here is more valuable. You can't. I'll fix this. And the angels did. And then this next statement.

Then the Lord knows, this is all part of the same sentence, then the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations and to reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment.

We live in a society that is becoming more and more just another modern Sodom. But, you know, it's just not the U.S. The rest of the world is doing the same thing. There's no place to live in this world today that you're not living in some version of Sodom. I don't care where you live.

It's all just another version of Sodom.

We have to be careful not to be some calloused by this, because we will be tormented. Now, you can't be tormented all the time. God does not want you to be tormented all the time, because He said He gives us the spirit of peace. We are supposed to find peace in this, because where do we find it? In God. We find that peace in God. If you don't find it there, you're going to get tormented all the time. So, we find our peace in God. That's why.

Be glad you have a congregation. We can find peace with each other, too. And that's going to become more and more important. And your families will become more and more important. Your marriage will become more and more important, because that's all you're going to have.

That's it. As far as being able to find peace. If there's not peace in their homes, you know, they're actually tracking now. They call it, there's a damage that's done to people's brains because of the stress of the last two years. They show the same trauma on the brain as people who were abused as children. And especially among little children. I mean, when I end up in the hospital, our little five-year-old granddaughter started to cry. She said, but I heard nobody had to wear a mask anymore. It was over. It was over. It's gone. Now, how can anybody still be getting sick?

And of course, she had never worn a mask, but she'd seen somebody be with masks. And she said, I don't understand why it's gone now. Why is Grandpa sick?

We didn't even know she knew that COVID was around. We didn't know she had any trauma over any of this. And she just cried and cried. We have to realize that still, just like a lot, we have to be an example of righteousness in the world. We have to be that example.

By doing what's right, and in doing what's right, people are going to accuse you of a lot of things. First of all, the main thing is you're unloving. Loving people would never say somebody else is doing something wrong.

So we're going to have to continue to obey God, and continue not to become calloused by this. But the more we experience God's presence, the more we draw close to God. Remember, I talked probably six weeks ago about seeking God's face. The more we seek God's presence in our lives, in His guidance in our lives, yeah, we're going to feel oppressed at times, but we're also going to find the peace. Today's a good day, isn't it? We got up. I don't know. I had a cup of coffee and a cup of eggs. I got to come to church today. I got to drive in a car that has heat and air conditioning. And we got to be here together. It's a good day. Thank God for it. Thank God for it.

But we better start to treasure these things because we're going to have to be... it's going to take effort to do these things. It's going to take effort to keep our families, keep right with God, live in a world where you may lose jobs or have people make fun of you. I hear more people tell me stories of having trouble at work over all kinds of things that no one used to care about two years ago. I mean, nobody literally cared. And now it's an issue. Like lot, we're going to have to struggle with making sure we don't compromise. And we're going to struggle with that. And sometimes we're going to and God's going to keep bringing us back out of it. We're going to struggle with what we go on. But let's go back. Let's just go back to 2 Peter 2 and remember this. Because if anything else, remember this in that story of Lot. He's not the bad guy in this story. He's actually the good guy. He was just fallible like the rest of us. He just fallible like the rest of us. In 2 Peter 2 verse 9, Then the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations. He knows how to deliver us just like he delivered Lot. So keep looking towards God. And God will know he knows how to deliver us from the evil that will come.