The Real Sin of Sodom (Rock Springs UMC)

Just a reminder, I mentioned last week that this weeks

message would be a PG13 message and you're going to understand

why just from the language that that we hear and the Genesis

reading and not going to be graphic, but I am dealing with

some topics that are mature in nature and I just wanted to give

folks a heads up about that. I think these things need to be

preached on even though sometimes they are.

They are hard to say and hard to hear and maybe uncomfortable to

hear, but they're in the Bible. They're part of our Scripture.

And I think we need to hear these messages from our Father

as well as the ones that are a little more happy, happy joy,

joy kinds of messages. So Genesis chapter 19 versus 1

Genesis 19 · chapter mention

to 13. We're skipping a little bit

ahead in the narrative and Genesis 18, angels are sent from

God. They visit Abraham, they tell

Abraham we're going to go and destroy the cities of Sodom and

Gomorrah. Abraham pleads for and bargains

for the people of Sodom and Gomorrah.

We're going to talk about that. Not next week.

I'm going to be gone for a couple weeks.

We'll talk about that when I get back.

But we're jumping ahead because in order to really understand

Genesis chapter 18, we need to understand Genesis chapter 19.

Genesis 18 · chapter mention Genesis 19 · chapter mention

And so we're going to start there and then back up and get

Genesis chapter after 18. But let's read today.

The 2 angels arrived at Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting

in the gateway of the city. When he saw them, he got up and

met them, bowed down with his face to the ground.

My Lords, he said, please turn aside to your servant's house.

You can wash your feet and spend the night, and then go on your

way early in the morning. No, they answered, We will spend

the night in the square. But he insisted so strongly that

they did go with him and entered his house.

He prepared a meal for them, baking bread without yeast, and

they ate before they had gone to bed.

All the men from every part of the city of Sodom, both young

and old, surrounded the house. They called out to Lot.

Where are the men who came to you tonight?

Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.

Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him,

and he said No, my friends don't do this wicked thing.

Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man.

Let me bring them out to you and you can do what you would like

with them. But don't do anything to these

men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.

Get out of our way, they replied.

This fellow came here as a foreigner and now he wants to

play the judge. We'll treat you worse than them.

They kept bringing pressure on Lot and moved forward to break

down the door, but the men inside reached out and pulled

Lot back into the house and shut the door.

Then they struck the men who were at the door of the house,

young and old, with blindness so that they could not find the

door. The two men said to Lot.

Do you have anyone else here, sons in law, sons or daughters

or anyone else in the city who belongs to you?

Get them out of here, because we are going to destroy this place.

The outcry to the Lord against its people is so great that He

has sent us to destroy it. That is Genesis chapter 19.

Genesis 19 · chapter mention

Now hear these words from Ezekiel chapter 16.

Ezekiel 16 · chapter mention

This was the guilt of your sister Sodom.

She and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous

ease, but did not aid the poor and the needy.

They were haughty and did abominable things before me.

Therefore I removed them when I saw it.

May the Lord add to the His blessing to the reading and the

hearing and living of His Word. We're talking today about the

sin of Sodom and the real sin of Sodom, our culture, and it's

been, it's been present in our culture and in in churches for

for many, many years. Not from the very beginning, but

for many, many years have have highlighted a particular aspect

of this story, misunderstood it and made that specific thing

what has been called the sin of Sodom.

But the real sin of Sodom, The reason that God destroyed the

cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and other towns and villages that

were around them and part of their sphere of influence and

under their authority. God tells us about in Ezekiel

Ezekiel 16 · chapter mention

chapter 16, and he's very, very explicit about it.

This was the guilt of your sister Sodom.

She had pride, excess of food and prosperous ease, but did not

aid the poor and the needy. The real sin of Sodom is

prosperous is is that they were prosperous and arrogantly cold

hearted. They were prosperous and

arrogantly cold hearted. And that attitude and mindset

and way of living is what led them to eventually do all of the

abominable things that are covered in that more general

word in Ezekiel 1650. But the real sin was in their

prosperity. They were arrogant and cold

hearted to those who were in need.

Now we're going to break this apart.

First looking at Ezekiel chapter 16 in a little bit more detail,

Ezekiel 16 · chapter mention

and then I'm going to talk about why it's so important that we

get this right. And then at the very end, what

we can do. But I just want you to kind of

know that progression. We got to look at what the sin

is, why it's important we get that sin right, and then what we

can do in our current context in response to these scripts,

captures. Going to break it down.

This was the guilt of your sister Sodom.

She and her daughters had pride, excess of food and prosperous

ease, but did not aid to the poor and the needy.

We're going to start in the middle.

This excess of food and prosperous ease is kind of the

linchpin here. It's the thing that led to the

other thing, the other things being a problem.

So excess of food is, is a way of saying they were wealthy.

The city of Sodom and its surrounding areas were wealthy.

They were incredibly prosperous. We already knew that because

when Lott and Abram were, were looking out over the fields and

the lands and the areas and, and Abram said, Lot, we need to

split up because we're bumping into each other.

You pick which area you want and Lot look down at the Jordan

Valley where the city of Sodom was and saw how good the land

was and said, I'm going to go there.

Then we're told then that he pitched his tents near Sodom.

By Genesis 19, he's living in the city of Sodom.

It was a prosperous area, agriculturally rich, probably

rich in trade as well. They had a lot of extra stuff.

And, and, and at most points in history, we live in such

prosperity today. We don't quite see it this way

anymore, but at most points and places in history, having an

excess food of food was a sign of significant wealth.

If you had more food than you needed, you were wealthy.

And that's where Sodom was excess of food and prosperous

ease. That that phrase, prosperous

ease meant that they were indifferent in their prosperity.

And we're going to come back to that in a little bit.

So they were prosperous. They had more than they needed.

They had an excess of food. And there are two ways in

general that you can respond to prosperity, to economic,

financial, material prosperity. One of those ways to respond is

gratitude. My God, thank you for blessing

me, blessing us with more than we need, with humility and with

gratitude, recognizing where your good things come from.

The other way is the way Sodom responded and that civilization

responded, which is with pride. We have all of this prosperity

because we're great. We're just, we are exceptional.

We are better than the surrounding nations and

surrounding cities. There is just something special

and wonderful about us. We're smarter than they are.

We work harder than they do. We have earned this prosperity

because we have worked for it and we are just that good.

That's why we have more than other people do.

Pride. Their prosperity did not trigger

humility in them. It triggered pride and they

leaned into that, that sense of we have it better because we are

better. We have more because we are

superior. Our nation, our country, our

culture and civilization is just an exceptional nation, country,

culture and civilization, and that's why we have so much more.

We've earned it. And if you want to share in our

prosperity, all you need to do is be like us, and you too will

be prosperous and can live in sort of prosperous ease in this

world. And that's how Sodom responded

with pride, with pride. And because they were

prosperous, and because they responded to their prosperity

with pride rather than humility, that led them to be indifferent

in their prosperity to the needs of the poor.

And even though they had all of the resources that they needed

to do it, even though they could have done many things to help

the poor and the needy, they just said no, Nope.

If they want what we've got, they can work for it like we

did. If they want what we've got,

they can become like us. We have.

And we don't know what they necessarily said was superior

about them and work ethic or skin color or culture or

civilization or history or religion.

But it was their pride. They were.

It's because they were great. And then if people are poor and

in need, well, it must be that there's something wrong with

them. And it's not my concern.

That's their problem. Who cares if they're suffering?

Who cares if they are in need? This was the sin of Sodom.

This was the sin of Sodom, Ezekiel continues.

And this is actually God speaking directly speaking to

Ezekiel and through Ezekiel to his people.

We'll talk about that a little bit more in a moment.

But God sums it up this way. They were haughty.

That word haughty there has got the same root as pride in the

previous verse. So reemphasizing their pride.

And they did abominable things before me.

Therefore, I removed them when I saw it.

That phrase, abominable things in Hebrew.

I'm not going to give you the Hebrew word for two reasons.

One, I can't pronounce it, and two, I can't remember it.

But I do know this. I do know this.

It's a, it's a, it's a general word for awful, despicable,

terrible things. And it's used throughout the Old

Testament in a number of different ways.

Ezekiel uses it a lot in his book.

He uses it a lot in his book and it it's a catch all term for

awful things. Ezekiel uses it primarily to

refer to idolatry and adultery, which are often linked in the

Bible, Old Testament and New Testament.

That's how Ezekiel uses it. But it's used for all sorts of

other sins and bad things that that people are taught not to

do. Don't do these things.

So the progression that we get here in Ezekiel from God's own

mouth is that in their prosperity, Sodom responded with

pride and became indifferent to and cold hearted toward the poor

and the needy, the vulnerable that were among them.

And that attitude of prideful, prosperous arrogance and

indifference is what opened the door for them to eventually

engage in all sorts of evil kinds of things.

And what we see in Genesis 19 is, is kind of the end result of

that as as a quick snapshot of this is how bad it got.

So those specific acts that we see in Genesis 19 alone aren't

the reason why God destroyed Sodom.

They were, I had a teacher somewhere along the way,

actually I've mentioned her before.

Her name's Kimberly Butler and and she talked about in sin

there's difference between roots and fruits and and the fruit the

the root of Sodom's sin, the root of their sin was there in

their prosperity. They were proud, arrogant and

indifferent to the needs of the poor.

And the fruit of that sin were the despicable things that we

see just a few of them there in Genesis chapter 19.

Genesis 19 · chapter mention

All right, And we're going to talk about those in just a

minute. But this is the sin.

This is the sin, the sin that's often labeled as the reason why

God, the thing, the reason it's often given as to why God

destroyed Sodom is, is supposedly the sin of

homosexuality. Homosexuality is not even talked

about in Genesis chapter 19. We're not seeing the men of the

Genesis 19 · chapter mention

city engaging in homosexual activity.

We're seeing the men of the city gathering to gang rape 2 guests,

and to suggest that the sin that God destroyed them for as

homosexuality is to suggest that if guests, if the angels had

appeared in the form of women rather than men, then if his sin

just wouldn't have been as bad. If the men had gathered to rape

two women, well that wouldn't be as bad.

I don't think anyone here believes that that somehow

raping women is is less evil, less despicable, less abominable

than race raping men. Rape is evil, period.

And the men, both young and old, every man of the city had

gathered outside of Lot's house to rape the two guests that were

staying in Lot's house. And that was the fruit of the

sin of pride and cold hearted indifference in the midst of

financial prosperity. Is what that what led to that

The real sin of Sodom was that they were prosperous and

arrogantly cold hearted. And in their prosperous,

arrogant, cold heartedness, they eventually normalized something

as awful as gang rape of people. And so God wiped them out.

God wiped them out. So why is it so important that

we understand this rightly? It's important that we

understand this, right? This is not a question of just

theological nitpicking or, or, or exegetical hair splitting.

There's a reason why these stories are in the Bible.

And if and the reason, the reason is simply this, the story

of Sodom and Ezekiel's prophecy are warnings.

And if we mislabel the sin, we will miss the warning.

These are here for a reason. They're not.

They're not there. I mean, there were a lot of

things that happened in the ancient world that didn't get

written down in the book of Genesis.

This one got written down. It's there for a reason, the

story in Genesis 18 and 19, and it's there as a warning.

And God emphasizes that in Ezekiel, the context of Ezekiel

making his prophecy is this. So Sodom.

After God destroyed Sodom, Sodom became a byword.

Sodom was a shorthand reference of saying as evil as it gets,

that a city, a nation, a culture or a civilization were as evil

as it gets, and God destroys nations, cities, cultures that

get that evil. That's what Sodom became a

byword Sodom. The people of Israel looked down

their noses at Sodom. They judged Sodom.

They stood in arrogant contempt over Sodom.

And then this awful thing happened among God's chosen

people and the nation that God had given them.

They became so far off track that God sent the Pagan empire

of Babylon in and they conquered the nation of Israel and they

conquered the city of Jerusalem and they sacked Jerusalem and

they destroyed the temple, God's physical dwelling place on

earth. And they they did one of three

things to the people that were left in Israel.

They killed a whole bunch of them.

They deported a whole bunch of them, took them into exile to

become slaves in the empire of Babylon.

And the few people they left behind, they left them behind

because they were so weak and so much not a threat.

They just left them there to work the ground.

And that's what happened to God's chosen people, God's

nation, Abraham's descendants. And while they're in exile in

Babylon, God sends them a prophet, Ezekiel, to tell them

why they're in exile in Babylon. They're going, why aren't we

here? We thought God loved us.

We thought we were God's chosen people.

We thought we had divine protection.

Does this mean God is faithless? Does this mean our God is weak?

Is that why we got conquered by Babylon?

Are their gods stronger? Is our God too weak?

Is our God faithless? And God says through Ezekiel,

no, you're here because you became like Sodom.

You became like Sodom. And he compares them to other

cities and other civilizations that God had also destroyed as

well. But we're talking about Sodom

today. And that's why God calls them,

says to them, your sister Sodom, he's addressing his people, says

you're like your sister Sodom. You're just like that alone.

See, being called Sodom's sister would have been a huge insult to

all of the folks Ezekiel was talking to.

But God said, you're just like your sister Sodom.

You're prideful in your prosperity, and you've become

cold, heartedly indifferent to the poor and the needy.

That's why I wiped out Sodom, and that's why I sent you into

exile. Sodom is a warning.

Ezekiel's prophecies are a warning.

Throughout the New Testament, you hear Sodom raised repeatedly

as the epitome of what God does not want from his people and

from the nations and cultures of this earth.

And if we mislabel the sin of Sodom, then we miss the warning.

And if we miss the warning, then we fail to be the sort of

witness that God calls us to be and wants us to be as his people

in this world. It's so crucially important that

we get this right because, well, we'll talk about the because

Sodom is the polar opposite, the antithesis of the Kingdom of

God. When we pray thy Kingdom come,

thy will be done on earth. It is in it as it is in heaven.

We are praying that the Kingdom of God overthrows the kingdoms

and cultures of this world, including the kingdoms and

cultures that are like Sodom. It is the opposite of what God

wants. God rejects and destroys.

Cultures, communities and nations that are prosperous and

yet arrogantly cold hearted to the poor and the needy.

God says I will wipe that from the face of the earth.

It will not endure. I'm going to get back to the

warning being personal and social.

I was realizing when I was preaching it earlier that I put

that in and doesn't make sense to talk about it here.

I'll talk about it later, very soon.

What do we do? So what do we do if, if this is

a warning, if these scriptures are in there as a warning to us

and to all peoples of the earth throughout history, what do we

as God's people do? Now we'll talk about, I should

have just said it. Now, we'll talk about the

warning being both personal and social, because there's a way to

respond to this warning that is at a personal level.

So we've got to see where we are in our prosperity.

We've got to see where we are in our prosperity as individuals,

as families. But there's a social component

to this. And in fact, in this passage,

the social component vastly overwhelms the personal

component because God didn't go to Sodom to destroy an

individual. God destroyed a civilization in

a in cities. God didn't send Ezekiel to

preach to a person. God sent Ezekiel to preach and

prophecy to a people, to a nation, to a civilization.

And so we need to see the warning at the personal level,

yes, but also at the level of our cities, our communities, our

nation, and our civilization. And So what do we do?

We got to check our GPS. Now at this point, I'm going to

beg your forgiveness in advance for a very lame pun that I am

about to inflict upon you. So if we imagine 2 cities, the

city of Sodom and the New Jerusalem, which comes down from

heaven, and when Jesus establishes his Kingdom, we read

about in the Book of Revelation, 2 cities, and we got to know

whether we're heading toward one city or the other.

We got to check the GPS, right? We're on our road to one city or

the other. We got to check the GPS.

In this case, our GPS is the God Positioning System.

Forgive the pun, I know it's lame, but it works, right?

It works. Our God Positioning System,

where are we according to God? So let's take a look at it

according to that metric that God gave us through Ezekiel.

Are we prosperous? Are we arrogant?

Are we cold hearted? Are we prosperous, arrogant or

cold hearted? Well, one by one, are we

prosperous? Yes.

Check. No questions asked, period.

If you're sitting in this room, you are prosperous.

If you're standing in this room too, if you're in this room,

frankly, if you're living in this county, if you're living in

this state, in this nation, you are almost certainly among the

prosperous people of the world, even at our our poverty, and I'm

not trying to say this again, this is not an excuse to be

colder, indifferent to folks that are poor and in need in

this country. But poverty line in the United

States is wealthy in most places in the world.

It just is. If you've got a refrigerator

with food in it and it's more food than you need for today,

you're wealthy. If you've got a television, if

you've got a car, if you own a house, if you've got healthcare

provided for you either through private insurance or or or

government supplemental kinds of insurance, you are wealthy.

If you have education provided for you through taxpayer

funding, you are wealthy. You have access to resources

that most people in the world don't.

We are prosperous. There is almost no way to live

in this country and not live in prosperity.

So we're just going to check that box and say everything

going forward. We got to acknowledge this.

We are living in prosperity. We are part of the most

prosperous nation in the history of the world and we're living

right smack in the middle of it here.

And when God looks at prosperity, he's not going to

look at Meigs County and say, oh, well, you know, I compare,

if you compare them to Franklin County or Cuyahoga County,

they're not that prosperous. But God doesn't play those

games. God looks at the whole world,

something like 2/3 of the people in the world.

Like, like how many is that? 4 billion people live on less

than $2.00 a day, period. And you have to get all of your

food, all of your healthcare, all of your medicine, all of

your housing, every, all of your drinking water out of that $2.00

a day. That's where most people live.

We're prosperous. Question is, are we arrogant in

our prosperity in this country? And again, we got to look at it

personally, look at it socially as well, because at this point,

we have a choice in this country.

We're prosperous. We got to choose.

Are we going to respond to our prosperity with arrogance or

with humility? Are we going to respond to our

prosperity saying, you know what?

America is just an exceptional nation, greatest nation in the

history of the world, better than all the other nations out

there. A bad day in America is better

than a good day anyplace else. Why are we prosperous?

Because we work harder. We're the shining city on a

hill. We are just better than other

countries. Or are we going to look at our

prosperity and receive our prosperity and say God has been

gracious, God has been merciful, because we know that Jesus died

for every living, breathing human on this planet, and none

of us is any better than any of them.

We are all sinners, all sinners in the eyes of God, and the only

hope we have is through His mercy and His grace.

And our God has blessed us with so much more than we need.

And it can't be because we earned it.

It must be because God is gracious.

Those are those two perspectives are light years apart.

In biblical terms, they are kingdoms apart.

One is the Kingdom of the New Jerusalem.

One is the Kingdom of Sodom. Do we respond to our prosperity

with arrogance or with humility? And are we cold hearted or will

we choose to be compassionate? If we choose to be humble, then

it's much easier to choose to be compassionate.

If we look at the great tremendous blessings that we

have and say God has given us so much more than we need and it's

a blessing, it's a gift from God, not that we earned it.

It's a gift from God. Then we can look and say, how

can I share this? How can I help my sisters and my

brothers who God blessed with less, Maybe God blessed me with

more so I would get to enjoy the blessing of sharing it with

them. And that's why I have more that

we can choose to be compassionate.

We can choose to say God has blessed me with so much, God

must want me to share it. God has blessed this nation with

so much, God must want us to share it.

There is a particular moral philosophy out there.

It's been there for years. I can't remember which old dead

guy said it, but I and I think he's got he's on to something.

I should look this up because we get to reference the specific

person. And I don't know that you can

live in absolutes, absolutes. It's really tough to draw

absolute lines. But he phrased this in the form

of an absolute. And he said that any time a

society, a culture, a civilization is trying to make a

decision about a certain policy or practice or plan to ask the

question, is it good for the poorest people in our society?

And if it's not good for the poorest people, then it's not

good. Now, I don't know on an absolute

basis whether that can be said to be true every single time.

But what a way to look at policies and plans and programs,

whether they're in the school system or in the city or in the

state or in the country, and ask, will this be good for those

that are the most poor, the most needy, the most vulnerable among

us? And if not, is it really good?

Is it really good? We have been given tremendous

prosperity and two choices. Will we respond to that

prosperity with arrogance or with humility?

Will we respond to that prosperity with a cold hearted

indifference or with compassion? And those are the choices that

we have before us. The real sin of Sodom is that

they responded to those choices with arrogance and cold hearted

indifference and that opened the door for all manner of evil in

their lives. All manner of evil.

And here's the thing, Lot was saved from the destruction and

most of his family were saved from the destruction not because

Lot was good. We're told at the end of this

chapter that God saved Lot to honor Abraham because Lot was

Abraham's nephew and God saved Lot out of respect and to honor

Abraham. Lot.

Lot who knew the promise. Lot who knew that his

relationship to Abraham made him part of God's promise to be a

blessing to the whole world and got moved.

Lot moved into Sodom and had zero impact.

His impact was so minimal. His family, he and his family

became like Sodom. So they're, you know, so the

people come and they say we want to rape these guys.

And this is and I, the gang rape of strangers, of guests who've

been given the privilege in the position and the protection of

hospitality. The people that showed up at

Lot's house came there to do rape, and that was the

abominable thing. Whether that was a rape of men

or rape of women, it was gang rape.

And Lot's response was thankfully not here.

Take him to protect himself. Thankfully it wasn't that.

But did you hear what Lot told him?

Take my daughters, take my daughters, They're virgins.

Rape them. This was Lot's response.

Then as they were fleeing the city, Lot goes to tell his sons

in law they're well, future sons in law.

The men his daughters were going to marry.

Hey, God's going to destroy the city.

We got to get out of here. They had such little respect for

him. They just laughed at him.

That's what the Bible, they laughed at him.

Stupid, crazy old man. And so Lot flees with his

daughters and with his wife. And as they're leaving the city,

his wife, the city that was so far gone, every single man

showed up at Lot's house in that city, young and old.

And his wife looks back at that city with longing.

She didn't just turn around to see what was happening, she was

looking. I don't want to leave this

behind. And God took her life and they

flee to another city and then lots of fray there.

So they flee, takes his daughters up into the mountains

and his daughters now in the mountains with their father.

Everything they've known has been destroyed, saved by the

angels from being gang raped. And they find themselves going,

you know what, we're up here. Dad's dad's messed up.

He's a drunk now with everything that's going on.

Mom's dead. We don't have any husbands.

We need someone to take care of us when dad's gone.

We need kids. We need sons.

And what their solution is? They raped their father.

One daughter says I'm going to get dad drunk tonight.

When he's passed out, I'm going to have sex with him.

Second daughter did it the next night.

And if you don't think that's rape, just flip it.

What if Lot had said I'm going to get my daughter drunk and

have sex with her tonight? Everyone knows that's rape.

It's rape when it goes the other way too.

The very thing that was the abominable thing that was being

threatened to them, they did to someone else.

The real sin of Sodom. That's just the fruits of it,

the root of that. How do daughters get to the

point where they're willing to do something like that to their

father? How does a father get to the

point where he's willing to send his daughters out to be raped

because of pride in the midst of prosperity and a cold hearted

indifference to the vulnerable and the needy?

That's how you get there. And that's the sin that we are

warned against and that we are called to live and preach and

teach against as we live out the values of the Kingdom in this

world. In Jesus name, Amen.

Amen.