“The Sin of Sodom” (Genesis 18:16 - 19:29) | 7/12/20
Genesis 18:16 - 19:29 | 7/12/20 | Will DuVal
This morning, we pick up where we left off in Genesis, last week you’ll remember God not only confirmed and clarified his covenant with Abraham in ch17, but in ch18, God personally appeared to Abraham, as “three men” - and we’ll discover in ch19 that TWO of those men are actually ANGELS who will journey on to Sodom, while the third, identified with the Lord himself, stays with Abraham in Mamre. And beginning in v16 of ch18, God shifts his focus from his covenant with Abraham, to SODOM, its sin, and its impending judgment. As I’ve outlined in your bulletins, the story of Sodom unfold in 5 distinct acts, and I’ve alliterated the titles of these 5 scenes for us, this “story of sin”, if you will, but what I want us to see this morning, as always, is that this is not just the story of SODOM’S sin. We need more than a history lesson this morning; we need personal conviction. We need to read ourselves into the story. So we’ll consider as we work our way through, how the story of Sodom might serve as an analogy for the sin in our OWN lives as well. And we’ll end, as always, by focusing in on the cure for our disease.
But let’s begin by reading God’s word together… Genesis chs 18:16 - 19:29
Then the men set out from there, and they looked down toward Sodom. And Abraham went with them to set them on their way. 17 The Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, 18 seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? 19 For I have chosen[f] him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him.” 20 Then the Lord said, “Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave, 21 I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me. And if not, I will know.”
22 So the men turned from there and went toward Sodom, but Abraham still stood before the Lord. 23 Then Abraham drew near and said, “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? 24 Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city. Will you then sweep away the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it? 25 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! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” 26 And the Lord said, “If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will spare the whole place for their sake.”
27 Abraham answered and said, “Behold, I have undertaken to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes. 28 Suppose five of the fifty righteous are lacking. Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five?” And he said, “I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there.” 29 Again he spoke to him and said, “Suppose forty are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of forty I will not do it.” 30 Then he said, “Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak. Suppose thirty are found there.” He answered, “I will not do it, if I find thirty there.” 31 He said, “Behold, I have undertaken to speak to the Lord. Suppose twenty are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of twenty I will not destroy it.” 32 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.” 33 And the Lord went his way, when he had finished speaking to Abraham, and Abraham returned to his place.
Ch.19 The two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them and bowed himself with his face to the earth 2 and said, “My lords, please turn aside to your servant's house and spend the night and wash your feet. Then you may rise up early and go on your way.” They said, “No; we will spend the night in the town square.” 3 But he pressed them strongly; so they turned aside to him and entered his house. And he made them a feast and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.
4 But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man, surrounded the house. 5 And they called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may know them.” 6 Lot went out to the men at the entrance, shut the door after him, 7 and said, “I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. 8 Behold, I have two daughters who have not known any man. Let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please. Only do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof.” 9 But they said, “Stand back!” And they said, “This fellow came to sojourn, and he has become the judge! Now we will deal worse with you than with them.” Then they pressed hard against the man Lot, and drew near to break the door down. 10 But the men reached out their hands and brought Lot into the house with them and shut the door. 11 And they struck with blindness the men who were at the entrance of the house, both small and great, so that they wore themselves out groping for the door.
12 Then the men said to Lot, “Have you anyone else here? Sons-in-law, sons, daughters, or anyone you have in the city, bring them out of the place. 13 For we are about to destroy this place, because the outcry against its people has become great before the Lord, and the Lord has sent us to destroy it.” 14 So Lot went out and said to his sons-in-law, who were to marry his daughters, “Up! Get out of this place, for the Lord is about to destroy the city.” But he seemed to his sons-in-law to be jesting.
15 As morning dawned, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Up! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be swept away in the punishment of the city.” 16 But he lingered. So the men seized him and his wife and his two daughters by the hand, the Lord being merciful to him, and they brought him out and set him outside the city. 17 And as they brought them out, one said, “Escape for your life. Do not look back or stop anywhere in the valley. Escape to the hills, lest you be swept away.” 18 And Lot said to them, “Oh, no, my lords. 19 Behold, your servant has found favor in your sight, and you have shown me great kindness in saving my life. But I cannot escape to the hills, lest the disaster overtake me and I die. 20 Behold, this city is near enough to flee to, and it is a little one. Let me escape there—is it not a little one?—and my life will be saved!” 21 He said to him, “Behold, I grant you this favor also, that I will not overthrow the city of which you have spoken. 22 Escape there quickly, for I can do nothing till you arrive there.” Therefore the name of the city was called Zoar.[a]
23 The sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zoar. 24 Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven. 25 And he overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground. 26 But Lot's wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.
27 And Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord. 28 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.
29 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.”
This is the word of the Lord... (LET’S PRAY...)
-
Scene #1 - Sin ADDRESSED (18:16-21)
The first thing that must be said about ALL sin, is that God SEES it. Sin, by definition, is god-lessness. Rejection of God. But that doesn’t mean God IGNORES it. God states in Jeremiah 16:17 “My eyes are on all their ways. They are not hidden from me, nor is their iniquity concealed from my eyes.”
God not only SEES sin, but his justice demands that he ADDRESS it. JUDGE sin. That is Sodom’s fate; it will serve as POWERFUL example throughout the rest of Scripture - Sodom is mentioned 27x outside the book of Genesis, more than even the FLOOD of chapter 6! - Sodom is a bright, flashing CAUTION sign, warning us of God’s hatred of sin, and His promise to judge it.
And it’s interesting is that God ADDRESSES the sin of Sodom, not with the Sodomites… not with LOT… but with Abraham. He says in v17: “ I won’t hide from Abraham what I am about to do”- and God offers 2 reasons why:
First, he says in v18: I’m disclosing this to Abraham because “all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him”. He is to be not only a father of many nations, but a blessing to ALL nations. Well, Abraham, here’s your first test! God is giving him an opportunity here - with Sodom & Gomorrah, these wicked, pagan, Canaanite towns - God is inviting him, specifically, to INTERCEDE on their behalf.
Second, God says in v19: “I have chosen [Abraham], that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice” God called Abraham to “be blameless”. He is to be distinct FROM the nations, to live according to a higher calling, and thus, serve as an example to others of godliness. So God raises Sodom’s sin with Abraham here, so that it might serve as an example to HIM of what NOT to do; the kind of behavior that I, the Lord, will not tolerate. Kent Hughes says: “their lifestyle was the absolute antithesis of righteousness and justice. ...Their ruins would become a powerful teaching tool to Abraham and his descendants. There on the border of Israel, the eerie, burnt-out, sulphur-stenched remains permanently testified to what happens to a people who reject [God].” (260)
So Friends: the very simple application question for you and me this morning is this: Do we really believe that God will “address” OUR sin? It is not uncommon to hear unbelievers say things like, “I’m not really that religious; I just try to be a good person, and I’m sure God is loving, and He will accept me.” And they make it clear they don’t have the faintest glimpse of just how HOLY God really is. Just how much God actually abhors sin. He will not and CAN not tolerate it, not even a drop. He sets the standard at perfection, Matthew 5:48; so if you are not 100% absolutely sinless, sorry, you do not measure up, and you are dis-qualified from Heaven and from relationship with Him.
But how often do even those of us who are in Christ use God’s grace as an excuse for our sin? That’s why immediately after Paul shares the gospel in Romans ch5, he asks in ch6 - “Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?”; because Paul KNEW that our sinful tendency would be to condone and indulge our sin, now that we realize God’s grace has covered it.
But brothers and sisters - the gospel is that God HAS addressed our sin, on the cross! And we believers, of ALL people, should therefore treat our sin with the utmost of seriousness, because the very centerpiece of our faith, serves as a perpetual, graphic reminder to us of just how seriously GOD takes our sin.
But despite God’s addressing sin, #2 - we tend all too often to AVOID it. (18:22-33)
Vv22-33 - what we have here, EVEN in Abraham’s well-intentioned attempt to intercede for Sodom - that they might AVOID the consequences of their sin - this really amounts to Abraham himself avoiding the depth and depravity of just how sinful Sodom has become. Let me say that again: even Abraham’s well-intentioned intercessory attempt here, exposes the fact that Abraham himself is avoiding the true depth and depravity of Sodom’s sin.
And because WE are sinners, Abraham’s line of reasoning here makes sense to us: “Will you, indeed God, sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to put the righteous to death with the wicked” - God: if you want to send COVID as judgment against the WICKED, that’s one thing; But “far be it from you” to let it affect the RIGHTEOUS. To impact MY life.” And like Abraham, we start to play the numbers game. Why’d he start with 50 righteous people, in v24? One commentator points out that “Amos 5:3 suggests a small city could field a hundred fighting men; consequently, fifty might represent half the city… an equal number of righteous and wicked in the city.” (Wenham, 52)
Sound familiar? “If my good deeds outweigh my bad deeds, then I’m mostly good, and God will accept me.” But it begs the question: how much sin SHOULD a holy God tolerate, in our lives? How much sin CAN He tolerate, and still be a truly loving Father? If my OWN daughter gave me a hug, then slapped me in the face, should I view those two things as effectively cancelling one another out? As her father, how much sin in her heart can I turn a blind eye to, and still claim to love her?
But just to play along and make his point, God agrees to Abraham’s terms in v26: “Okay Abraham - if there are 50 righteous people in Sodom, I’ll spare the whole city”. Then 45… 40… 30… 20… all the way down to 10. Why does Abraham stop at TEN? Presumably he is CONFIDENT that SURELY there are AT LEAST 10 righteous people in all of Sodom. Sodom isn’t just some small town; population estimates range up to 50,000 or more people. So Abraham slept in peace that night, feeling good about God’s agreement in v32 that “For the sake of ten I will not destroy it”.
The truth of the matter is that Abraham could have negotiated God all the way down to ONE person, and the city would still be doomed. You say, “Now wait a minute - I thought the NT describes LOT as “a righteous man”?” That’s true. Despite everything we are about to hear about him in ch19, everything we already learned back in ch13, even the WORST of it that we’ll discover NEXT week, 2 Peter 2:7-9 still describes Lot THREE TIMES for emphasis as a “righteous man”. HOW?! Because, Lot’s righteousness, like Abraham’s in ch15, v6, like ANY righteousness in ANY unrighteous sinner like you and me, is only EVER the righteousness of FAITH. It is COUNTED or CREDITED, IMPUTED TO us, as righteousness simply on the basis of our trust in God. And despite ALL of Lot’s failures, and they are many, he still believed in God.
Lot’s righteousness, like ours, was not his OWN. So God doesn’t contradict himself when he declares in no uncertain terms in Psalm 14, Psalm 53, Ecclesiastes 7, Romans 3, 1 John 1 that “None is righteous, no, not one”. And that was certainly true, of all places, in Sodom - NOT ONE righteous.
But let’s turn back to the mirror now: what about us? Don’t we too avoid at all costs, dealing with the depth and the depravity of our own sin? Don’t we similarly justify and rationalize and negotiate and excuse and MINIMIZE our sin as well? Don’t we say of our OWN hearts, as Abraham did of Sodom: “Surely the situation isn’t THAT bad, God?” My sin isn’t THAT bad. Don’t we try and relativize our sin: my sin isn’t NEARLY as bad as hers! Like the driver who gets pulled over for going 65 in a 60, our best defense is: “Yeah, but didn’t you see the other cars flying past at 80 and 90?!” All in our desperate attempts to avoid the unavoidable truth that God does not grade on a curve, and that He would be perfectly JUST to send every last ONE of us to Hell forever, for just ONE seemingly minor offense, because there ARE no minor offenses against a perfectly HOLY God. “NONE is righteous”. Friends: please be careful what you wish for, when you pray like Abraham for God’s justice - “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” - the gospel is the good news that you and I don’t HAVE to get what we deserve!
But despite our best attempts to AVOID facing our own sin, and its just consequences, the reality is that #3 - we all ACT OUT in sin every single day. (19:1-11)
Look with me at ch19, vv1-11, and ALL the sin in just these 11 short verses.
V1: the angels find Lot “sitting in the gate of Sodom”.
Remember: Lot shouldn’t be in Sodom in the first place. When he left Abraham in ch13 in an envious tizzy, he at best ignored Sodom’s reputation for sin; at worst, he sought it out. Then after Sodom was conquered and exiled in ch14, God gave Lot a chance to recognize his waywardness and repent, but like a dog that returns to its own vomit, here he is, back in Sodom.
And not only that, he’s “sitting in the gate”; Hughes notes (267) “Lot’s position in the gate indicates [in ancient Near Eastern context] that he was a major player in Sodom. Significantly, Genesis records the progression of Lot’s assimilation into Sodom. Initially he had “moved his tent as far as Sodom” (13:12), next he is described as “dwelling in Sodom” (14:12), and here he is pictured as “sitting in the gate of Sodom” (19:1). Lot had become a prominent man in Sodom.” And that’s how sin works, isn’t it? At first, you just hang out AT the parties… then you engage in a little partying… before long, you are the LIFE of the party.
We read on; v2: “When Lot saw them… he said, “My lords, please turn aside to your servant's house and spend the night” - Why? Was he just hospitable? That doesn’t explain why he “presses them strongly” in v3 when they politely refused his offer; I think Lot KNOWS they are emissaries of God - he bowed down and called them “my lords” - and Lot certainly knows what happens to outnumbered strangers at night in Sodom’s town square - 2 Peter 2:8 says, “as [Lot] lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard”. Lot knows FULL WELL the depth of Sodom’s depravity, and his offer here is really his own attempt, in his shame and embarrassment, to AVOID and cover up the sin of Sodom.
Then we come to v4: “the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man - you hear the EMPHASIS?? - surrounded the house. 5 And they called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may know them.” Sexually. There’s been a lot of scholarly debate in recent years over the question of what exactly WAS the “sin of Sodom”. The LGBTQ movement has sought to reframe Sodom’s sin not as “sodom-y”, homosexuality, but rather, as “gang rape”. That, they say, is what the Bible takes issue with here. The problem is that Leviticus 18 and ch20, and Romans 1, and 1 Timothy 1, and 1 Corinthians 6 all clearly identify homosexual practice as sin, and Jude 1:7 even clearly ties homosexuality to the sin of Sodom specifically!
But the BIGGER issue is that rather than trying to LIMIT the scope of Sodom’s sin, the whole point here is that Sodom’s licentiousness knows no bounds! Hughes explains (261): “If we imagine the sins of these cities only in sexual terms, we miss the depth of their depravity. The Hebrew word for “outcry” [in ch18] is used in Scripture to describe the cries of the oppressed and brutalized… ” In fact, the prophet Ezekiel describes their sin this way: “Behold, this was the guilt of… Sodom: she… had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.” (16:49) How does a society reach the point where EVERY MAN of the city, young and old, makes a habit of homosexual gang rape? It starts by simply ignoring the cries of the poor and needy. And pretty soon, you’re the one MAKING them cry. That’s how sin works; it is a virus, a cancer, that naturally spreads and intensifies.
So Lot, hypocritically, begs them in v7 “not to act so wickedly”; there’s no telling what kind of sin he’s indulged in, in order to be deemed a “prominent man” by such people. Notice the term of endearment he uses for them, “my brothers”. But just when you think perhaps Lot is finally repenting and standing up to them... his proposal in v8 is, to ME, as a father myself of a daughter, the most despicable of ALL the sins detailed in this chapter: “Behold, I have two daughters who have not known any man. Let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please.” There are simply no words to describe the darkness and the degradation of the mind that would even THINK UP such a “solution” to this predicament.
Fortunately for Lot’s daughters, the men are so degenerate that they REFUSE Lot’s offer; this isn’t just about physical pleasure for them, it’s about POWER - exerting dominance over another. Young girls are too easy; we want the men. And in their angry opposition, they threaten LOT too - “Now we will deal worse with you than with them.” Presumably rape AND kill him.
So the angels pull him back inside in v10, strike all the men outside with blindness, and the height, or the depth, as it were, of their wickedness is realized in v11 as they “wear themselves out groping for the door”, despite their blindness.
What about us? It could be easy for us to read a passage like this and think to ourselves, “Thank God I’m not like THEM! not like LOT!” And yet, that kind of self-justifying, self-excusing, sin-relativizing attitude just proves that we are EXACTLY the kind of people who need to heed the warning of Sodom. That we are more like the Sodomites than we are dissimilar from them.
“All have sinned, and fallen short of the glory of God.”
“If you keep the whole law but fail in just one point, you have become guilty of all of it.”
Friends: are we willing to be humble and courageous enough this morning, to take an honest look in the mirror of God’s word, and admit that we stand every bit as much rightfully condemned as the men of Sodom? That we need God’s undeserved MERCY just as desperately as Lot did?
Quickly, #4 - Sin ACCOMMODATED (vv12-22)
To “accommodate” can mean in the NEGATIVE sense: “to become adjusted or adapted to” - Lot and his family have become so ACCLIMATED to a life of sin, that even in the process of being mercifully saved FROM it, we find them adapting their behavior to make allowance for the continued presence of sin in their hearts.
It starts with his son-in-laws, in v14, who just blatantly LAUGH OFF the idea that their sin might be judged. Keep in mind, Lot had to “go out” of the house to find them, they had joined the mob. These are the kind of men Lot had picked out for marriage, for his little girls.
Then we hear in v15 that as morning dawned, the angels said, “Time to flee”, and what is Lot’s response? V16: “But Lot lingered.” Left to his own devices, Lot would have never left; sin’s hooks had gotten too deep down in his heart. But “the LORD being merciful to him… the men seized him... and they brought him… outside the city.”
And even THEN, Lot is still making accommodations for his sin - the angels instruct him to “escape to the hills”, but Lot has gotten FAR too accustomed to the allures and enticements of big-city life; so he BEGS them in v20: “I can actually see another city just over the ridge there; please, let me run there instead. It’s just a LITTLE city - Zoar means “little” - don’t make me give up my life of comfort and sin cold-TURKEY; surely I can still have a LITTLE fun, right? Just a few drinks, a little hooking up; it’s just a little lie, a little gossip, a little jealousy. And even in our alleged repentance, we make accommodations for our sin. “You can take the man out of Sodom, but you can’t take Sodom out of the man”.
And yet, “accommodate” can also have a positive connotation: “to do a kindness or a favor to; oblige”. And that’s exactly what God does for Lot here, in v21: “Behold, I grant you this favor also, that I will not overthrow the city of which you have spoken.” Aren’t you so grateful that God bears with us, in our sin? That God doesn’t give UP on us, despite our sin. That he doesn’t say, “Go clean your act up, and THEN we’ll talk about me forgiving and saving you”.
Listen friends: if you wait until you’ve got your own act cleaned up, you will NEVER give your life to Christ. He says, “Come as you are. The more sinful you are, the more of my glorious grace I get to display!”
Finally, #5 - Sin ADJUDGED - “to sentence or condemn” (19:23-29)
God offers forgiveness to sinners, but He still promises JUDGMENT for sin. And in vv23-29 here, you get a whole CITY’S worth of it, in Sodom. And in v26, we hear that Lot’s wife was numbered with them. “She looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.” Jesus himself explains why she looked back, in Luke 17: “On that day [the COMING day of judgment, for ALL sin of ALL people for ALL time], let the one who is on the housetop, with his goods in the house, not come down to take them away, and likewise let the one who is in the field not turn back. 32 Remember Lot's wife.” → She missed her STUFF. She longed for the life she had left behind.
1 John 2:15-17 says “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him… The world is passing away along with its desires” When you decide to follow Jesus, there can be NO looking back!
And friends, it was one thing to reject God 4,000 years ago, but here’s what the Bible says about the fate of those who reject His FULL and FINAL self-revelation in the person of JESUS: “And you, Capernaum… you will be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. 24 But I tell you that it will be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you.”” (Matt 11:23-24) Those who have seen and heard of Jesus are without excuse.
-Friends, we need a Savior who doesn’t just shout down from heaven, “Try harder!” but who CAME down from heaven to personally address our sin problem.
-We need a better intercessor than Abraham, because we can’t even muster up the analogous equivalent of whatever 10 righteous men would equate to: we have NO righteousness of our own, whatsoever, to bring to the table, to contribute to our salvation: we come with hands TOTALLY empty, or we don’t come at all. Jesus + Anything = NOTHING. But Jesus + Nothing = EVERYTHING.
-And it is SO significant that this story ends, in v29, with God remembering Abraham, while he drags Lot kicking and screaming out of Sodom, that’s exactly what God does for you and me, in Christ. It is for CHRIST’S sake, for HIS glory, that God saves us. That “while we were yet sinners”, with nothing redeemable in us, that Christ died for us. And it is for HIS sake, that God graciously credits HIS righteousness to us, by faith, and does NOT deal with our sin as we so dreadfully deserve, like Sodom.
“Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?”
He should. Justice is getting what you deserve. But mercy is getting what you DON’T deserve. Praise God that Jesus unjustly took God’s justice, so that you and I could receive His mercy. Let’s pray.