Remember Lots Wife - Leland Zehr

Good morning. Welcome to all of you, especially visitors, want

to again welcome you and thank you for being here

with us this morning. It's nice to have you here.

Thank you for those of you that filled your role

already this morning devotions singing. We're well into harvest. Someone

told me that we're maybe seventy five percent done. Another

week or two, and I suppose many of you will

be leaving and going back to your homes. The days

have been long and the night's short, abnormal schedules, and

I think in a time like this, it's it's good,

it's right to bring in the harvest when it's right.

Takes a lot of hands and a lot of effort

and long days. But in the in those times, we

get physically and emotionally tired and weary as well. And

at times like this we can become spiritually vulnerable. And

when when we are physically and emotionally exhausted and our

time with God gets less, our schedule gets interrupted, we're

more susceptible to falling when the temptations come. That's just

the way it is. Some of you are spending many

hours sitting in a tractor or in a some kind

of equipment thinking and listening and what are you feeding

your mind? In solon. I guess it's not unusual to

get past summertime, get to harvest, get to fall. If

you're like us, we have communion in the early fall,

and different times people will meet others. Maybe we'll confess

that in the busyness of summer, didn't keep up my

devotional life, fell into sin so on. So I just

want to remind us all that we're in that moment

right now, and how are you doing. Don't let the

summer of twenty twenty four in Oregon be a negative

turning point in your Christian life. Don't let it be

a summer of regrets that impact you in some way negatively.

Be on your guard Jesus. Jesus got tired and work

some long days, and I'm just impressed different times what

he did when he got tired and worn out from

the pressures. We went alone and found a quiet place

and spent some time with God praying. And I know

that often people we feel like, well, the busier we get,

the last time we have for God. But I would

just encourage us all that God has a way of

multiplying both our time and our strength if we take

the time, he can more than make up for the

time that you pause and give him just to find

to recalibrate your thinking and your life for the day.

So spend time on your knees. I just think about

that in summertime. And it's not just young people, it's

h it's all of us. M m hm hm. Young

man who said that any of you know who in

the Bible said, remember lots of do you know? Are

you anyone? Jesus? Jesus who was a lot's wife? Jesus

said it in Luke seventeen. Who was a lot? And

why did Jesus say, remember Lot's wife? You can turn

to Luke seventeen and I would like to read there

in a little bit. Luke seventeen. The first part of

the chapter is talking about forgiveness and other things, and

then there's a story about where Jesus healed the ten

lepers one of them came back, and then in verse

twenty kind of transitions to another scene here, and like

so many of the passages, it seems like teaching opportunities

that Jesus gave started with a question from someone and

it triggers this response. And here in verse twenty of

Luke seventeen. It says the Pharisees demanded a asking basically

a question when the Kingdom of God should come. And

then Jesus started talking, and he said different things. And

one of the things that he said part way through

this passage is was remember Lot's life. Maybe I'll just

read the passage and then we'll go into this, okay.

Luke seventeen, starting at verse twenty. And when he was

demanded of the Pharisees when the Kingdom of God should come,

he answered them and said, the Kingdom of God cometh

not with observation. Neither shall they say, lo here or

lo there, For behold, the Kingdom of God is within you.

And he said unto the disciples, the days will come

when ye shall desire to be to see one of

the days of the Sun of Man, and ye shall

not see it. And they shall say unto you, see

here or see there? Go not after them, nor follow them.

For as the lightning that lighteth out of the one

part under heaven shineth unto the other part under heaven,

so shall also the Sun of Man be in his day,

but the first, but first must he suffer many things

And be rejected of this generation. And as it was

in the days of Noah, so shall it also be

in the days of the Sun of Man. They did eat,

they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage,

until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and

the flood came and destroyed them all. Likewise, also as

it was in the days a Lot, they did eat,

they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded.

But the same day that Lot went out as Sodom,

it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all.

Even though shall it be in the day when the

Sun of Man is revealed, in that day which shall

be in that day, he which shall be upon the

housetop and his stuff in the house, let him not

come down to take it away. And he that is

in the field, let him likewise not return back. Remember

Lot's wife, whosoever shall seek to save his life shall

lose it, And whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it.

I tell you, in that night there shall be two

men in one bed, and one shall be taken, and

the other shall be left. Two women shall be grinding together,

and one shall be taken and the other two men

shall be in the field, and one shall be taken,

and the other left. And the answered and said, unto him,

where Lord? And he said, unto them, whersoever the body

is thither will the eagles be gathered together? When shall

the Kingdom of God came? Was the question? Or will

it come? And Jesus goes into this interesting answer here

that you could go a lot of different directions with.

But I think that's all He's trying to tie this together.

He talks about the Kingdom of God and what it

is and what it isn't, And that's a whole other

message that I was tempted to preach, and maybe I

can preach with the Kingdom of God, he said, is

not with observation, But I think that needs to be qualified.

I think the Kingdom of God, you can see it,

manifests itself. But compared to the earthly kingdoms, the Kingdom

of God is not structured and visible and has all

the components like our that we're used to in our

earthly kingdom. It's different. He said. It's from within within

us and within our midst it's around us, he said,

it's here, It's happening even though it's not in the

way that the other earthly kingdoms like Rome were. He

talks about a couple past events. He goes into history.

He talks about the past judgment of God on the

wickedness of man, and the escape of the righteous in

the case of Noah and the flood, and in the

case of Sodom and Gomoran Lot in his family. He

talks about the present that it's here then, and then

he talks about the future when Jesus comes again, and

he likens those past experiences to what it will be like.

But the one verse that has stuck with me the

last while is, and I've been thinking about, is this

verse Remember a Lots. It's the only place in the

Bible that this is given. It's not given in any

of the by anyone else. It's not given by even

any of the other gospels. The Gospel of luke Is

only records this. So I'd like to do that this morning,

is remember a Lot's wife and see if there's some

see if we can maybe find some lessons that Jesus

was trying to teach here. Why did Jesus say, remember

Lot's wife? The Bible says very little about like I said,

Lot's wife says a little bit more about Lot. We

don't know even who Lot's wife's name was. There, there's

no name given. She's mentioned one or a Lot is mentioned.

Maybe there's a couple places in the New Testament, and

I'll maybe get to them a little bit more about

Sodom and Gomora, the hometown of Lot's wife. So I'd

like to back up just a little bit and talk

about this story and then draw some lessons from that.

But in the New Testament, maybe thinking about who was Lot,

Luke here mentions it, and in Peter he talks about

Lot second Peter two, or maybe just read those verses Lot.

There's controversy in people's views of Lot. Some see him

as a very good, righteous man, and others see him

as a very compromising can't see how he would have

been labeled righteous. But what Peter says here and second

Peter two six and turning the cities of Sodom and

Gomora into ashes, condemned them with an overthrow, making them

an example unto those that after should live ungodly, and

delivering just Lot with the filthy conversation of the wicked

for that righteous man Dwelleth among them and seeing and

hearing vexed his righteous soul from day to day with

their unlawful deeds, and so Peter says that Lot was

a righteous man, and that living in the in the

area of Sodom and Gomorah, vexed his soul troubled him

every day. It ate on him about what he's seen

and heard all around him. We first read about law

in Genesis eleven, and this is after the story of

Babel and the scattering of the people, and then there's

some genealogies and Lot's name comes up there and Lot

was so there was a man named Terra, and Terra

was the father of Abrahamnahor and Heron, so he had

three sons, and we know who Abraham was. Abraham's brother. Heron,

one of these brothers, was the father of Lot. So

this made Lot Abraham's nephew. But it doesn't say very

much in there at all. But it says that Heron,

which was Lot's father, died before Ta So we don't

know the age. Lot could have been a young boy,

he maybe was a teenager, maybe he was older. I

don't know, but his father died. It says nothing about

his mother. She may or may not have been alive.

I don't know. But what we do know as the

story goes on Tara, which is Lot's grandpa and Abraham

that married Sarah there, and Lot moved out of the

area that they were to, out of the land of

her to Heron. If I have this right, err, So

grandpa and uncle took Lot, and I don't want to

fabricate too much into it, but I can easily imagine

that Lot. As you think about Lot, he could have

been a grieving, young, shy boy with an orphan child.

His grandpa and uncle have now taken him under their wing,

and he moves to them to another land, and their grandpa,

Kara dies and now it's just Uncle, Abraham and Lot,

and there God calls Abraham to move to the land

of Canaan, and Abraham was seventy five years old at

that point. We don't know how old Lot was, but

it says that Abraham and Sarah and Lot all moved

and went to the land of Canaan. I can't go

into all of the details here, but I just want

to give you a brief overview of that. That's how

they ended up down in the land in that land.

But before we get to Sodom and Gomorrah. There was

a severe famine in the land, which took Abraham and

Sarah and Lot into Egypt to find I guess, food

and relief. And that is where the story of Abraham

telling Sarah to lie to Egypt about her being his

wife's sister. That was in that time frame. After they

were in in Egypt and the famine was passed, they

went back to Canaan, and that's where we pick up

the story in Genesis thirteen. If you have fast forward there,

it says that Abraham was now very rich. He had

many cattle, He had silver and gold, and Lot appears

to have grown as well, and he had cattle on herdsman.

And what we read there in Genesis thirteen is Uncle

Abraham and nephew Lot now had in my mind these

big herds of cattle and herdsmen, and they were in

this spot and it was getting crowded. The herdsman started

to fight and it was conflict, and that is where

Abraham finally comes to law and says, let there not

be strife among us. We're crowding each other, our herdsmen

are fighting. Why don't you, why don't we one go

one way and one go the other, and we'll just

space ourselves out, separated ourselves for the sake of peace.

And now where does Lot's wife come in? Somewhere in

here in this story he got married. Some would think

maybe that he got married while he was down in Egypt.

I don't know if that's right. But one thing that

would maybe make a little sense to that is, remember

Hagar was a handmade of Abraham and Sarah and ended

up having the child of Ishmael. It says that she

was an Egyptian. So likely Abraham and Sarah had picked

up Hagar when they were in Egypt in that famine,

and then she went back with them when they left.

And I think it's very plausible that maybe Lot found

himself a wife in Egypt. We don't know that, but

it doesn't mention his wife leaving, and it does meant

some of those other places, and it does mention that

Abraham and Sarah left, and then it says Lot, and

I think, if you'd had a wife, maybe maybe maybe not,

she would have been mentioned. So okay, So my point

here now Genesis thirteen eight or ead these verses, and

Abraham said to Lot, let there be no strife. I

pray THEE between me and THEE, and between my herdmen

and thy herd men, For we be brethren. Is not

the whole land before THEE. Separate thyself. I pray THEE

from me. If thou wilt take the left hand, I

will go to the right. And if thoull depart to

the right hand, then I will go to the left.

And so Abraham presented this plan to Lot. And now

here's where I may be reading in a little bit here,

and I don't want to paint Lot's wife, but we

have to fill in some gaps here. I can easily

imagine there's a pause between verse nine and verse ten,

between Abraham's presentationed a lot about separating and Lot's response.

It just seems like one conversation, and maybe it was.

But it says that in verse ten that Lot lifted

up his eyes and beheld the planes of Jordan, and

he chose that. But what I would tend to think

if he was like a normal man with a business

and had thought things through and was careful, and especially

if he was married, that he would have he would

have thought about it, and he would have went home

to his wife, and he would have talked to her

and said, honey, what do you think we got this

problem at work? We're Abraham and I are planning on

going oursel separate ways. We have the choice. We can

go to the east. We can go to the well

watered plains of Jordan. Maybe they talked about it an evening,

maybe they talked about it a week. Maybe they didn't

talk about it. I don't know, but I can I

would think that that would be normal. And one of

the things that I think that Lot was maybe married

now and not later, is that he seems like he's

ready to let Abraham go. He's willing to part He's

it seems like before he was following Abraham around as

a as a single man, probably found security. If he

got married, he was probably ready to move on with

life and separate. Nevertheless, this is the response when Locke

talked to Abraham in verse ten of thirteen, and Lot

lifted up his eyes and beheld the plane of Jordan,

and it was well watered everywhere before the Lord destroyed

Sodom and Gomorah, even as a garden of the Lord,

like the land of Egypt. As they'll comest out as

Zor and Lot chose him all the plain of Jordan,

and Lot journeyed east, and they separated themselves, the one

from the other. Abraham dwelt in the land of Canaan,

and Lot dwelt in the cities of the plain and

pitched his tent towards Sodom. But the men of Sodom

were wicked and sinners before the Lord exceedingly. And so

here we have Lot made the decision to take the land,

the well watered land, the valley of Jordan. And there

was I think five cities in that valley, and so

he pitched his tent and he settled in, and him

and his wife decided that's where they wanted to live,

wanted to raise their family. Now, just a little bit

about Sodom and Gomorrah mentions it here, But we know

that Sodom and go Mora lives on into our day

as the reality and the type of evil and wickedness

and the righteous judgment from God. They were in these

well watered plains, And if you think about that, I

don't know what it looked like, but I think about

the Wilama Valley. I think about a nice, well watered

place that is productive, that produces good crops, and an

economy is booming. Herds can grow plenty of jobs. And

we read in Ezekiel Ezekiel gives a little clip of

it of a description of Sodom. And in Ezekiel sixteen

he says this about Sodom. Ezekiel is actually warning the

people and rebuking God's people in that moment, but he

describes them as being worse than Sodom and Gomorrah. And

he says, behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister, Sodom. Pride,

fullness of bread, an abundance of idleness was in her

and her daughters. Neither did she strengthen the hand of

the poor and the needy. And they were haughty and

committed abominations before me. Therefore I took them away as

I saw good. So Sodom was this, this place of

much prosperity and fullness of bread. And they did so

well that they had they worked less than six days

a week. Probably they had idleness of time evenings off.

Maybe they worked four day weeks, I don't know. It

says there was idleness, plenty of time and leisure. But

all of this added up to a lot of wickedness.

Jude mentioned Sodom and Gomorrah, and this is what Jude says,

even as Sodom and Gomora in the cities, about them

in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication and going

after strange flesh, or set forth, for an example, suffering

the vengeance of eternal fire. So Sodom was a very

wicked place, but I really doubt I don't know for

sure that it was, in the big scheme of things,

much more wicked than a lot of places today. Most

of what is described of them is things you'd find

in most of our cities in the United States. They

were a proud people. They had fullness of bread and abundance, which,

by the way, often leads to sexual immorality of all kinds.

People that are not busy, people that have idleness of time,

people that are sitting around being not having to work,

leads to all kinds of wickedness and perversions often. And

so it was a comfortable place to live, but it

grieve the heart of God. And you get to Genesis

eighteen now, and I'm moving ahead in the story, and

this is what the Lord said. And the Lord said,

because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great. And

because there is sin, because their sin is very grievous,

I will go down and see whether they have done

altogether according to the cry of it. This has come

unto me, and if not, I will know. And so

it's kind of an interesting wording here. It's almost like

God is saying, I've heard a bunch of wickedness coming

out of that city, but I'm going to go down

and I'm going to check it out, and I'm going

to see if it's for real. And I don't know

how if that's actually what it's trying to say here,

but he sent angels down to actually go into the city,

and the story moves on. Then we're talking about Abraham,

Lot and Lot's wife. The story goes on and there's

an exchange between God and Abraham uncle Abe, and God

is revealing the Lord is revealing to Abraham about his

He's at least thinking about destroying Sodom. There's a lot

of wickedness going on, and I'm considering this, and Abraham

starts to bargain with God or plead with God and says, wait, God,

and Abraham probably knew some of the people we don't

read about all lots herdsmen, but he had it seems

like a whole group of people that he had brought there.

Abrahams asked, God, surely you won't destroy this wicked city

if there's enough righteous people there. He said, if there

was fifty people in that city that are righteous, would

you then save the rest of them for the fifty sake?

And God said yes, I'll do that. Well, then Abraham

got to thinking about it. He said, well, what about

forty five? And I don't know if he had a

list or how he was coming up with these numbers,

but it seemed like the more he thought about it,

he it worried him. And then at forty five, God

said yeah for forty five. And said, well, don't be

angry with me, God, but what about if there was

thirty or forty? Maybe it was forty first forty and

then thirty. God said yeah for thirty. Still all now,

And then Abraham said, well, what about twenty? If there

was twenty righteous people in this city, would you save

in God said, I'll spare it for twenty and one

more time. Abraham came back, and he evidently couldn't get

a list of twenty in his mind, and so he

went to God, to God, if there's ten people, if

there's ten righteous people in the city, then will you

spare it still? And God said, I will not destroy

it for ten. And that's where Abraham seemed satisfied or hopeful.

The story continues on and the angels come into Sodom

and a Lot is at the gate and he sees them,

and I think it's a testimony of Lot's hospitality. And

he invited them in and they at first said no,

we'll just we we'll stay in the city. And Lot

pled with them and he said, come into my house,

we'll feed you, we'll take care of you, stay for

the night. And the story turns real ugly there. And

I don't understand all of this, but it's part of

the story, these two angels. And I don't know that Lot.

I don't think that Lot knew they were angels. It

doesn't seem to be at that point. There were just

two men that came into the city and he was

being hospitable to them. And when dusk drew and it

got dark, I don't know what time. It says men

of the city, young and old came to the house

and someone had seen these men come into the house,

and they started demanding of Lot to to turn those

men out onto the street and to give them those

men for perverted sexual reasons. And Lot started reasoning with

these men, I suppose he would have known them, all

of them, and telling them, no, don't do that. And

he even went out of the house and shut the

door behind him and tried to negotiate with them. Well,

they just got more and more demanding. Finally the angels

took charge and they could see the unreasonableness of all this,

it says they they grabbed Lot and they brought him

back into the house. They shut the door, and they

smote all those men with blindness to or they were

just groping around out in the dark, couldn't find the door,

couldn't break in. So Lot they told Lot, they said,

the city's going to be destroyed. You need to get out.

And they said, are there other people, other family? Do

you have sons sons in laws that you want to go?

Try to ask to come with us, but we need

to leave. And so Lot went out. And I don't

know how this all played out. It appears like he

went out of the house and went to where his

son in laws, where the Bible calls him son in laws,

and it says that Lot was married to them, but

we know that they were virgins. And then as you

study into that a little bit more, it seems like

maybe more it was an engagement or a betrothal, because

they weren't married as we think at that point. And

Sola went to these young men, these fiancees of his daughters.

He had two daughters, and he told them, and I

suppose I don't know if they were sleeping at that point,

but it was probably nighttime and dark, and I can

just imagine a Lot knocking on their door and trying

to get their sons to come out, and the son

in laws, and he told them, he said, we need

to leave, We need to get out of the city.

It's going to be destroyed. And the Bible doesn't say

a lot about the conversation but says that they he

seemed to them as one that mocketh, which I don't

know if he just thought they were fooling around, he

was fooling around, or if he was out of his mind.

Whatever it was, they didn't take him serious and they stayed.

Maybe they said, well, let's talk about it in the morning,

we'll think about it. I don't know, but they didn't come.

The angels were waiting, waiting for a Lot to gather

whoever he could to come and come out of the city.

But at some point the morning was starting to break

and they had been going through this through the night,

and Lot and his wife were lingering, and I don't

know what all they were doing. They were probably hesitant

to leave that. I'm sure the girls wanted their boyfriends

to come. There was maybe other friends, maybe there's other

things they wanted to put in order. Finally, the angel said,

they grabbed a Lot and his wife and the two

daughters and took them out of the city and said,

we've got to go. The city's going to get destroyed.

And in verse nineteen of Excuse Me Genesis nineteen, verse seventeen,

as they brought them out of the city and got

them to the city limits, they it came to pass

when they brought them forth abroad that he said, escape

for their life. Look not behind thee neither stay thou

in all the plane. Escape to the mountain unless they'll

be consumed. And it's probably hard for us out of

such a story we've heard and read about, but to

try to think about how that must have been in

real time, this little family of four walking out of

as daylight was just cracking down this up, this trail

out of the city, single file close, nothing but the

clothes on their back, and their whole life and their

community and their boyfriends and their school and their things

and stuff and possessions and house and whatever all was

was behind them. And I don't know what all they thought,

or if they talked about, or if it just seemed

like an unreal dream to them, but they worked their

way out away from the city from the comfort of

their homes. I'm sure lot was thinking about the business

activities of the next day and the animals and the

herdsman and whatever all needed to be taken care of.

And so you picture this family walking out and I

don't know how far out of the city, but it

says when light broke and it became light, fire and

brimstone came down from heaven, and I can imagine it

was a sound, just an explosion, I would imagine as

it came down upon those cities, just in Golf did

in flames and in that moment, and maybe there was

cries in that moment. I don't know what all they

could hear, and what it must have been like to

hear that and the flash of the of the lightning.

But in that moment, Locke's wife looked back, and she

just froze in whatever position she was in, a white

pillar of salt, I imagine. And I don't know again

the details of that. We know that she turned into

a pillar of sault, and I imagine she froze in

the position when she disobeyed and looked back, and every

fine future of her face was still there as she

looked back, and her eyes were riveted on that far

away place, and fear and worry were up on her face,

and she just froze there. I don't know where she

was at in the line, If it was a lot

in her and her children, or if she was behind,

we don't know. But as imagine how that would have

been then for the rest of them, the two daughters

and Lot, his wife, their mother of many years. These

were young adult girls. They weren't just little girls, they

were women at this point. I don't know what they did.

I imagined if they were normal people, they would have

went up to their mom and looked at her and

tried to figure out what was going on, and maybe

touched her, circled her, tried to talk to her, waited

for this situation for her, for life to come back

in and they could go on again. But she just

stood there, just froze. So if they waited five minutes

or an hour or a day on their mother, but

at some point they left her, they realized she's not

coming back. And now you have three people, a father

and two daughters walking on alone. And the loneliness and

the sorrow that they must have felt as this reality

sunk in that Mom is no more with them and

she's not going to be with them, and the silence.

The cities are destroyed, the smoke is just rising. It

says that the lands, the herds, everything was just destroyed.

The birds there was probably just silent and eerie silence

through that. Jordan Valley, Lot's wife was probably a good

wife and a good mother in so many ways. I

don't picture her as a bad person. I think she

probably took good care of Lot. She was part of

the hospitality of her home. But that's the end of

Lot's wife. That's where the story ends as far as

Lot's wife is concerned. So what did Jesus sayer, remember

Lot's wife like to look at? Just a few things

here that I think maybe he was trying to impress

upon us as he talked here, as we read in

Luke seventeen, again, Jesus brings up these two history happenings,

these stories of knowing the flood and Sodom and Gomorah

in relation to the question when well the Kingdom of

God come and their true stories and their warnings, and

Jude says, there for an example to those that would

come after. And they're an example of humanity, their example

of the past, their example of what it's going to

be in the future. You know, now, all down through

history we think about these old stories and these people

that live different cultures and thousands of years ago. But

the reality is we as humans and our makeup and

our tendencies and how we end up responding to life

are a lot alike. Very little has changed. And Jesus

said that, he said, just like it was thousands of

years ago, it's going to be the same thousands of

years ahead. You're going to be buying, you're going to

be selling, you're going to be eating, you're going to

be marrying, you're going to be going on with life

like as in the days of Noah and in the

days of Lot. So the first point I want to

make is the Kingdom of God is within you. It

must be within you. It's a personal decision, it's a

personal choice. We can't we cannot escape God's judgment on

the shirttails of others, not on our mom, not on

our dad, not on our spouse, not on our church.

In a lot, lot Lot's wife had a righteous husband.

The Bible says, so, a very godly man. He vexed

his righteous soul what was happening in that city. He

didn't like it. He took a stand, he didn't involve

himself in it. He lived righteously and holy, I believe.

And we can surround ourselves with good people, and we should,

and family, and we can marry a righteous spouse, and

we can be a member of a conservative church, and

we can. And there's a certain amount of security we

feel in all of that. And those are good things,

and those are things we should strive to do. But

it is still possible that we can do all these

things and still be lost, and still be not part

of the Kingdom and the Kingdom of God is not

within us. It is beside us and around us, but

not in us. And we live in a in a

prosperous country like maybe never before, very few times in history.

And we live in a wicked country, and we don't

have to go to the cities to be in to

be in the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorah. You know this,

this thing called the World Wide Web has shrunk the

world and the cities and the country altogether. In one way.

It's available for us. And there's a lot more to

it than that. But we can take the sins of

Sodom and Gomora, and we can go to the privacy

of our bedroom at the end of our long lane

out in the country, in our bedroom, and indulge in

the sins of Sodom and Gomora in all kinds of ways,

all by ourselves. If the Kingdom of God is not

within us, the influences are real, and I think it's

just something we need to continue. I don't know what

to do about it, but we need to be aware

of it, and we need to continue to fight against

it and be aware of it. But all of those

things that are influences that tend to draw us into

the world. We don't end up in the world in

one big step. It's one step at a time. It's

a direction that we end up drifting to and that

comes through all kinds of influences of music and movies

and social media and different things like that. Entertainment. It's

like it's like a twenty four hour buffet of the

sins of Sodom and Gomorah that you can you can

have any time you want, at any place you want,

anywhere you want. It's available. You don't have to wait

for the parties to start at midnight. You can participate anytime.

The pleasures and all of this gradual process has a

way of desensitizing us. And I'd like you to think

about that word, being desensitized, and that is the picture

of you. Hear about how you can boil a frog alive,

and you can take a frog and you can put

it in if you drop it in boiling water, it

pops right out. You put a frog in lukewarm water

and you turn the heat up, and he'll just stay

in there, and he'll stay in there, and he'll stay

in there until the water's boiling and he's dead and

that is, that's what happens when we get decent and

I'm with you, We're in this together. It's not me.

I'm not in a different place than you. But I

think about that. I think that is something that we

need to be on our guard. The things that would

have just shocked us, the pop ups, the words, the whatever.

After a while, it's just like, oh, yeah, that's just

the way it is. And then we've got to decipher

soft porn from hard porn and all this other stuff,

like one is okay and one is not. We are

being desensitized by the pressures of the world that come

in and this thing of social media, it needs a

whole message on itself. But young people, you know, I

don't have it. I've thought of getting it to explore it,

but I haven't. But I hear from you all, and

I hear from even the governments of our country that

are grappling with this thing called social media of our young.

That is, they aren't worried about spiritually anything. These are

godless people. They are just worried about the emotional sanity

of humanity that is being eroded from these things of

social media. And it's not about conservative and liberal and

being narrow minded. It's about it has its effect. It's

like drugs, and if your mom and dad don't regulate

it for you, you need to regulate it. You need

to get rid of it and not allow that in

your life. Don't tell yourself lives. It's a it's a

spiritual death trap. It is. It's worse than real life

because it's again, it's just a bombardment of a never

ending pressure. Lot was a righteous man. The wickedness bothered him.

But it appears like wife. I don't know how much

it vexed her righteous soul. I don't know, but it

seems like maybe there was a difference, like maybe you know,

maybe she was the one that pitched her tent don't

wanted helped influence ending up in sodom. I don't know.

I don't want to blame her more than necessary, but

it seems like something about her heart and the reason

Jesus brought this up was that her heart was still back.

There is the point she lived with a righteous husband,

but it wasn't quite enough. She almost escaped, but she didn't.

Another point. Some will be taken and others left, and

this is with that, this is how it has always been.

This is how it was in Sodom and with Lot

and his family, is how it was with knowing the flood.

And Jesus said, it's how it's going to be in

the future. There's gonna be, there's gonna be. He goes

on to say, there'll be two in a bed, and

one will be taken and one will left. There'll be

two women grinding together, one will be taken, one will

be left. There'll be two in the field, one will

be taken, one will be left. And just like Lot

and his two daughters were separated from their mom and

their wife because of her heart and her disobedience, so

it will be with us in that day. And the

righteousness of Lot was not enough to save his wife.

And I like you to just think that when the

judgment of God comes and has came and will come,

there's always just two parties. There was always just the

wicked that drowned or the wicked that got burned up,

and the few righteous that lived. And he says that

that is how it will be in the end. They'll

be the righteous and they'll be the wicked, and there's

not kind of that in between. Spot if Jesus came

tomorrow and the bailie crew or the construction crew, or

would you be left or would you be taken? Would

I be left? Another one? Don't let your stuff? It

stood out to me. It's interesting. I thought that would

have just been an English slang word, and maybe it is.

But we talked about stuff. Don't let our stuff for

our vision, he says in thirty one, in that day

which he which shall be on the housetop and his

stuff in his house, let him not come back down

to take it away. And I think that, you know,

a Lot was a successful man, and so is Abraham.

Stuff doesn't make you bad. Stuff doesn't make you wicked automatically.

But there is something about stuff, and the fullness of

bread and the many things, and the nice house and

the nice clothes and the good food that can tend

to just kind of absorb and draw and take us.

And maybe Lot's why I've had lots of stuff. Maybe

she was thinking about that her home, the things that

she had back there, her belongings, you know, And we

need stuff to live. I can't believe how much stuff

it takes to live sometimes just to raise a family

in different stages, and the bikes and the sleeping bags

and the pillows and the it's endless. It takes lots

of stuff, but we need to be careful. Probably doesn't

take as much as we think it takes to be

careful not to let this stuff get wrap up our hearts.

Remember that it's all gonna burn, it's all gonna It

serves its purpose. It's a tool, it's something we use,

but it is nothing lasting. And the last point I

want to give here is back to what the angel

told Lot's wife, possibly the last words she heard, or

some of them. He said, escape for your life and

don't look back. But she didn't take it seriously. She

didn't look back for a long time. She made it

a long ways out of the city. You know who

is guiding your heart? Where is your luck and where

is your desires? You know it works both ways. Our

luck leads our heart, and our heart leads where we look.

They influence each other. But there's something about we all

live with temptation. That is normal. We are tempted and

we have to deal with that. But a temptation and

a look is different. When we look towards the past,

the things that we have left, the things that we

know are not good for us, the things that we

have fallen into, but we look back on that longingly

with a desire for that. That is just the first

step to being right back in it again. Where we

look is generally where we end up in life those things,

and they're different for all of us. There's things in

your life that you know have taken you down time

and time again, and you've gotten rid of them, and

then you tried it again and it took you down again.

Those are the things that we need to not look

back on. We need to quit looking at them. When

we look, we weaken ourselves, we waffle. And there's too

many times that I and too many Christians that live

in that stage of just kind of vacillating between what

I know I should do and what I want to do,

and between straddling and defense of and taking time off

my Christian life and diving back into that for a

little bit we can. We are ineffective as God's people

when we are doing that, We are living in wickedness.

Don't look that escape for your life. I'll just read

a couple verses yet two Peter, these come to my mind,

for it had been better for them not to have

known the way of righteousness, than after that had known it,

to turn from the holy commandment delivered under them. But

it is it is happened under them, according to a

true proverb. The dog has turned to his own vomit again,

and the sow was washed, that was washed to her

wallowing in the mire. Where are you pitching your heart?

Pitching your tent? Which direction? What are you angling for?

The direction that you angle and the place that you

look is where we end up as we go on

in life. So I want to leave that challenge with

us as we go through life and we strive to

be a part of God's kingdom within us, things come

up with temptations. Remember a lot's wife, God bless you.

Let's have a song.