The Real Sin of Sodom (Chester UMC)

I said last week that this was going to be APG 13 sermon.

You can probably see why already given the nature of the passage

that Brandon just read. This is a tough passage.

Genesis chapter 19 is, in my opinion, one of the most

Genesis 19 · chapter mention

challenging chapters in the entire Bible.

It, it, it, it has some of the most disturbing imagery, some of

the most disturbing things that are happening.

And, and the city of Sodom became so infamous and and so

despicable that that God wiped them out.

And all of the kind of subsidiary towns that were part

of their dominion and part of their sway.

So infamous that the city of Sodom became the byword among

the people of Israel for hundreds and hundreds, even

thousands of years, of how not to be of the worst a city could

possibly be. The worst that a culture or a

community or a civilization could possibly be.

To be equal to or worse than Sodom was to be in line to be

destroyed by the Lord, just as Sodom had been destroyed by the

Lord. One of the challenges of this

passage is at for, for us in 21st century America is the way

Genesis chapter 19 has been wrongly interpreted for many,

Genesis 19 · chapter mention

many, many years. And it goes back many years, not

all the way back to the beginning, but it goes back many

years. And so we often hear this story

wrongly. And it's important that we hear

it rightly. And I'm going to explain that a

little bit later, but I want to get, I want to get into to kind

of the, the meat of what the real sin of Sodom is.

Why did God destroy Sodom and Gomorrah?

Because God did. God wiped them out completely

from the face of the earth. God wiped them out so thoroughly

that there are still debates now among archaeologists of where

the city really was because it was absolutely obliterated by

God's own hand. So let's talk about this.

The real sin of Sodom is prosperous and is a prosperous.

They were boy, I got the one of the most important slides.

It's up there twice and I got the grammar wrong.

Prosperous. Now I did get it right.

They were prosperous and arrogantly cold hearted.

That's the sin of Sodom. We miss it in Genesis chapter 19

Genesis 19 · chapter mention

because what we see in Genesis chapter 19 is kind of the end

Genesis 19 · chapter mention

result of how bad, how far off track a culture and civilization

can become when they are prosperous and arrogantly cold

hearted. But we know this is the real sin

because hundreds of years later, God speaking through the prophet

Ezekiel, is addressing his people and his people, the

nation of Israel. They have been in covenant

relationship with God for hundreds of years, since the

time of Abraham himself. And they got so bad as a nation

that God sent a Pagan empire, the Babylonian Empire, to come

in and wipe out the nation of Israel, to sack the capital city

of Jerusalem, to destroy the Temple, God's own house on

earth, God's physical dwelling place on earth, and to deport or

kill almost all of God's people, the Israelites, take them into

captivity in Babylon or kill them.

Or kind of the the least influential, the least

threatening, the least powerful, the least of the people were

left there just to work the ground because they were no

threat to the empire or to the people around them.

And God, through his prophet Ezekiel, one of his prophets,

through Jeremiah and Isaiah as well, but at this point, through

his prophet, Ezekiel is explaining to his people why

this happened to them. Ezekiel is speaking to God's,

God's people in exile in the Pagan empire of Babylon and

telling them, This is why this happened to you.

When when the Babylonians came and threatened, you said no, no,

no, no, no. We're God's chosen people.

We are a superior people. We are a superior nation and and

God will never allow us to be destroyed.

And God allowed them to be destroyed and they're in exile.

The prophet Ezekiel comes with God's own words to say This is

why this happened to you. And in that prophecy, which is

the book of Ezekiel, is long and very depressing.

Just, you know, if you want to jump into it, go for it.

It's a tough book to read. But God goes through and

compares his people, Israel, to other nations and other

civilizations that God had previously wiped out.

And one of them is Sodom. And this is what God says about

Sodom and why he destroyed it, as he is comparing his own

people, the nation of Israel, to Sodom and that civilization.

This is what God says. This was the guilt of your

sister Sodom. Just calling Sodom their sister

would have been enough to set their teeth on edge.

What do you mean? Sodom's our sister.

Sodom's that evil city that you wiped out years ago.

And God says, yeah, you're just like your sister.

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

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

We're going to start in the middle.

Excess of food and prosperous ease.

It's a way of saying you're wealthy.

They were wealthy and they were prosperous and they were

complacent and had an arrogant disregard for the needs of the

folks that weren't benefiting in their civilization.

The poor and the needy, they had plenty.

They could have shared, they could have helped.

But they said who cares? It's their problem, not my

problem. Me and my family are OK, We're

doing all right. Who cares about them?

They had an abundance of resources but couldn't be

bothered to help the poor and the needy.

So they were prosperous. They were prosperous and they

had pride. They had pride, see, in their

prosperity. Sodom and Israel at this time

that they were in exile, they could have said, hey, we're

prosperous. Why are we prosperous?

We're prosperous because God has blessed us with with prosperity.

Let's bow down and humble ourselves before God and do

things God's way and give honor and reverence to God in the way

we live as well as with our words as well as with our ritual

acts of worship. But instead in their prosperity,

they said we're prosperous because we're great.

We are awesome. We are an exceptional

civilization. We're prosperous because we have

we work harder than the other people around us.

We're prosperous because we're smarter.

We're prosperous because we have the best civilization.

We're prosperous because we have the best education.

We're prosperous because we're strong and, and, and, and, and

have an excellent military. We're prosperous because we're

better. There's just something better

about us. That's how we got all of this

stuff. That's how we got all of this

stuff. And if these folks over there

that are poor and needy want to share in this prosperity, well,

they just need to be like us and then they'll be prosperous too.

Pride. They attributed their prosperity

to their exceptionalism. We're the best people.

We're God's people. We're the shining city on the

hill. We are the nation that all other

nations should envy and want to be like.

And if you want to share in what we have, you just need to be

like us. So their prosperity did not lead

to humble gratitude before God. It led to pride that elevated

them in their own eyes over the people that were around them.

And that kind of combination prosperity combined with pride

leads to a careless, cold hearted indifference to the

people around them that were in need.

The poor and the needy didn't get it, didn't get anything.

They're poor and needy. It's probably their own fault.

Let them suffer. It's just a sign that they're

not living the right way. It's the sign that God doesn't

approve of them like God approves of us.

It's the sign that they just need to get their act together,

pull themselves up by their bootstraps and do what they need

to do. Or it's just a sign that they

just aren't as good as we are. Maybe they've got the wrong skin

color. Maybe they've got the wrong

speak the wrong language. Maybe they've got the wrong

background and the wrong ancestry.

Maybe they've got the wrong philosophy.

Maybe they've got the wrong religion.

Whatever it is, it's wrong and they're on their own.

And it's not my job to take care of them.

Not my job. This was the guilt of Sodom.

This is why God wiped them out. The very next verse sums it up.

They were haughty and did abominable things before me.

Therefore I removed them when I saw it.

God said this cannot stand the word haughty there.

It's the same root as the word pride in the previous verse that

abominable things. This is important because the

mental and spiritual attitude of prosperity combined with pride

and a callous, cold hearted indifference to the poor and the

needy leads to all manner of abominable activity.

When you go through the the Old Testament and look at the places

where that word abominable is used, it's used for every type

of sin that the Bible labels is really, really bad.

Ezekiel uses this word a lot. I'm not even going to try to say

it in Hebrew, partly because I can't remember it in Hebrew, but

we don't need to talk about that.

But he uses it a lot, and Ezekiel uses it almost

exclusively to refer to adultery and idolatry as abominable

things. Ezekiel labels them adultery and

idolatry, which Scripture pairs over and over and over again.

But we know there were other abominable things going on in

the city of Sodom. There were other abominable

things going on in the city of Israel.

And there is a certain thing in that passage in Genesis that has

been lifted out and highlighted. It's been misnamed and turned

into the thing that Sodom did wrong.

And we got to take a minute and look at that because the

cultural push in this direction is so strong that if I don't

push back against it explicitly, then then I'm not doing my job

here. When I'm preaching today the

abominable things, some folks say that the sin of Sodom is

homosexuality or was homosexuality.

I got to say, homosexuality is not even mentioned in Genesis

19. You say, pastor, pastor, those

angels came in the form of men and the men gathered to have sex

with them. That's homosexuality.

That's not homosexuality. That's gang rape.

You get that? This is, this wasn't people

engaging in homosexual behavior. This was a group of men coming

to rape two people. And to insist that homosexuality

was the sin here is to say that if the angels had been women,

this wouldn't have been a big deal.

God would have said, oh, well, that's not that bad, they're

just raping women. And I don't think anyone

believes that. I hope no one believes that.

I'm surely don't think anyone here believes that.

But that's the implication. To say that if the guests, the

visitors had been women, that the sin wouldn't have been as

bad somehow implies that raping women is not as bad as raping

men. This is an abominable thing.

This is it's an abominable thing.

When 2 strangers come to town. And Lot, who's a judge, he has a

leadership role in the city of Sodom.

He knows how dangerous this city is for these men.

So he says don't sleep in the square.

That would have been the normal thing.

Don't sleep in the squared. Come to my house and he gets to

the house and he feeds them. So now they have the, the, the,

the right of hospitality of guest protection.

Anyone here fan of Game of Thrones?

If you're, if you're a fan of Game of Thrones, you understand

one of the big pieces in Game of Thrones was, was, was salt and

bread. When you visit someone's house

and you get salt and bread and now you have the protection of

that household. George RR Martin didn't make

that up. That's an ancient tradition and

it's a very powerful tradition. And Lot was trying to protect

these men by bringing them under his protection.

But his protection didn't mean anything.

That's how far the city had become, how far down the road of

detestable thinking, how cold hearted and arrogant that they

had become. And Lot wasn't free from this.

Lot's solution was to offer his daughters to be raped instead.

Take my daughters, they're virgins.

Do with them whatever you want. Just don't attack my guests.

Some people defend Lot and say that they that the value of

hospitality is so high, such a high value, that it's a better

thing for his family members to be raped than for his guests to

be raped. I'm not going to.

I'm not going to hold that up as a virtuous act on Lot's part.

To me, it's just a sign. I mean, Lot chose to live there.

Remember, this was the city Lot chose to live next to and is now

living in. This is the city that Lot looked

at and said, oh, this is a good place to raise a family.

Yeah, I want my kids growing up with these kids and learning how

to act like these kids, act and think like these kids.

This is what Lot raised. He chose this.

He chose this, so this detestable thing and, and in the

eyes of ancient peoples, when the story was first written and

story was first told, the gang rape of guests in violation of

all of the deeply held rules of hospitality is about as

detestable a thing as anyone could imagine.

The fact that it was men rather than women doesn't make a

difference. This is what this is.

This is when we talk about, you know, slippery slopes, when a

culture and a civilization embraces their prosperity with

an attitude of pride, saying we're so wealthy because we're

exceptional, and then becomes callously indifferent to the

poor. The Scripture tells us there in

that society and in that culture, eventually nothing will

be unthinkable and every awful thing will be done and embraced

by the community. And everyone had embraced it.

Scripture tells us every man, young and old in the city came

to Lot's house that night. Do you hear echoes here?

I hope you hear echoes here. If you've been listening to

these Genesis sermons for a while of back in in, in early in

Genesis chapter 4, chapter 5, when Cain killed Abel and God

Genesis 4 · chapter mention

said to Cain, where is your brother?

And Cain said, am I my brother's keeper?

Cold hearted indifference. He just killed his brother, but

he didn't care. In Genesis 6, just before the

flood, when God says the thoughts and inclinations of

every heart was always evil all the time, and so God wiped them

out. And here in the city of Sodom,

the thoughts and intention of everyone's heart was always evil

all the time, and so God wiped them out.

It's the same pattern over and over and over again that humans

repeat somehow without getting the message, somehow without

getting the message of the real sin of Sodom was prosperous,

being prosperous and arrogantly cold hearted.

Having all of that blessing, saying it's because I'm great

and who cares about the people that don't have it.

God will not tolerate that. And that's why this is so

important. Why this is not a matter of just

theological nitpicking and, and, and, and, and it's not a it's

not a question of, you know, political correctness here.

This is extraordinarily important for us as God's people

and the body of Jesus Christ and the world today in 21st century

America day today to understand why this is so important.

The story of Sodom and Ezekiel's prophecy.

These are warnings, and if we mislabel the sin, we miss the

warning. If we mislabel what the problem

really was, we fail to grasp the warning.

And the warning is this. The cultures and civilizations

that are arrogant in their prosperity and take pride in

their prosperity and become indifferent to the needs of the

vulnerable and the needy and the poor around them, God will not

tolerate and God will eliminate. It's the closest you're ever

going to see me get to a fire and brimstone sermon.

But God gives these warnings for a reason.

There is a reason why over and over and over again in the

Scripture, the city of Sodom is used as a byword because that

culture, that civilization was the very antithesis of the

Kingdom of God. It was the opposite of what God

intends for all of His people to live and how all of His people

should live. And if we miss that warning,

particularly when we live in the most prosperous nation in the

history of the world, If we miss that warning, we run the risk of

being like Lot, moving into the city of Sodom and failing to

have any impact at all on the culture and the spirit of that

city as one of God's chosen people, one of God's called

people. Lot had no impact there, none

whatsoever. Not on his wife, not on his

daughters, not on his son-in-law.

He had no impact on the people of the city outside of his

family. He became Co opted by the

culture and his family, although they didn't die that day, were

destroyed as well. We'll talk about that in a

minute. We've got to see the warning so

that we don't miss the warning, so that we can be the faithful

witness and provide the testimony and seek the Kingdom

of God rightly in the midst of this prosperity.

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

God, and part of our responsibility of the church and

being salt and light in the world is to be an influence in

our communities and our culture and our civilization so that we

do not descend into the city of Sodom, which we could, which we

could. God rejects and destroys

cultures and communities and nations that are prosperous and

arrogantly cold hearted toward the poor and the needy.

That is clear over and over again throughout the scripture.

This warning is personal as well as social and this is important

we we have a in the United Western Christianity is tends to

be very, very individualized. We it's hard to escape that I

can't I best I can do is to be aware that it's a thing that

that we talk a lot about individuals getting saved and

are you saved? Are you going to heaven?

Am I saved? Am I going to heaven?

God was addressing a civilization here, a city, a

community, a group. But there's a personal level to

this. There's A and the personal level

is I got to check my temperature.

I got to see, am I being more influenced by the world's

culture around me or am I influencing the culture of the

people around me? Am I being drawn along in the

current, or am I pushing against the current?

Am I intentionally living out the values and the ways of the

Kingdom of God? Or am I simply accepting as

normal what's happening around me because that's the way

everyone's doing it and it seems to work?

There's a personal level to this, but this is the warning is

social. Those two angels were sent not

to punish a person, but to wipe out a civilization.

Ezekiel wasn't speaking to an individual.

Ezekiel was speaking to a nation in exile.

And the warning is not just for individuals to straighten up and

fly right, but for cultures, for cities, for communities, for

nations to return to the Lord and to exercise within their

cultures and communities and civilizations and nations the

values of the Kingdom of God, the Lord our God.

So what do we do in all of this? How do we respond?

How do we respond? Well, we got to check our GPS.

I'm going to ask your forgiveness.

We're going to figure out where we are, if we're going to figure

out where we are on the spectrum of the Kingdom of God or Sodom.

Which city are we heading to? Are we heading to the New

Jerusalem or are we heading towards Sodom?

We got to check our GPS. Forgive me, I'm about to give

you an awful pun and I feel the need to ask your forgiveness

upfront for that. Our God positioning system, I

know it's lame, but it works. So we're going to check our GPS.

Where are we positioned? Are we, are we positioning

ourselves according to God's values and God's call in our

lives? Are the culture's values and the

culture around us call on our lives?

Are we prosperous? Are we arrogant?

Are we cold hearted? And we can think about that as

individuals, but it's important that we think about it as a

culture and as a civilization, as well as cities and counties

and countries. Are we prosperous?

Are we arrogant? Are we cold hearted and

different to the needs of the poor and the needy?

Because if we are, we will be wiped out eventually,

eventually. So let's let's walk through it.

Are we prosperous? Yes, yes, the United States

again, the most prosperous nation in the history of the

world. It is.

It is true that that even those living at the poverty line in

the United States are wealthy compared to the standards of the

rest of the world. There is no denying that we are

prosperous. If you have a refrigerator with

food in it in your house, you are among some of the wealthiest

people in the world. If you own a house, you're

really among the wealthiest people in the world.

If you own a house and a couple of cars, you're among the

wealthiest people in the world. We live in a prosperous nation.

There is no doubt about that. There is no escaping that.

And when, when God looks at wealth and prosperity, God does

not see the lines that we draw on the map and say, oh, well,

yeah, I know. But they were living there.

And they're not nearly as wealthy as those folks in LA or

Chicago or Dallas OR, you know, New York.

God looks at the whole world, all of his people, everywhere.

So, yeah, we're prosperous. What about the arrogant part

here? We can be arrogant if we choose

to be. We can wave the flag of American

exceptionalism and say that the reason why we're so prosperous

is because we are just that good.

You know, we work harder, we try harder, we're smarter.

We've got all of this amazing culture and history and

civilization behind us, and we have what we have because we are

awesome. That's the road to Sodom.

Or we can humble ourselves and choose humility instead and say,

my God, you have blessed us with so much.

We know that we're not better than any other flesh and blood

people on this earth, but you have blessed us richly.

Show us how to share this blessing.

Show us how to use the prosperity you've given us to

lift up the poorest of the poor, to defend that most vulnerable

of the vulnerable, to care for the needy both down the road and

on the other side of the world to the best that we can.

We'll never fix all the problems.

We'll never solve all the problems.

We'll never care for every single person that's poor or

needy, but how can we do a little bit better next year than

we did this year? That's a choice that we have in

our prosperity. We can respond with arrogance or

we can respond with humility. And then are we cold hearted or

will we choose to be compassionate?

We have choices in these. We were if we were, if you were

born into the United States, you were born into prosperity.

If you moved to the United States from a place that was

much poorer, you moved into prosperity.

We're not going to change that. But we can decide.

Will we be humble and will we be compassionate when we look at

those who are vulnerable, in need and in need and, and blame

them for their situation? Or will we say, what can we do

to lift them up, to care for them, to love them?

There's a moral philosophy. I can't remember.

I cannot remember which one of the old dead guys came up with

this, but they said in their conception of how good worked in

the civilization, they said if a thing isn't good for the poorest

people in the civilization, then it's not good.

I don't know if I could ever. I don't know if you can.

Drawing hard and fast absolute lines is always risky business.

I think that's a great way to think about things in our

communities and our counties and our school systems and our

culture and in our country. When we're walking in to our

neighbour's house or when we're walking down the street or when

we're walking into the voting booth, say, is this good for the

folks that are the most vulnerable and the most needy?

And if it's not, is it really good?

Is it really good? Again, we can't.

We are prosperous. We are prosperous.

So we got to choose. Are we going to be humble and

compassionate or are we going to be arrogant and cold hearted?

The real sin of Sodom is they chose arrogance and cold

heartedness and Lot didn't escape it.

The rest of the passage in Genesis 19 is this.

As they're fleeing the town, Lot goes to his sons in law.

And Lot had such little influence and impact on his sons

in laws that when he told them that the God was about to

destroy the city that they needed to leave, they just

laughed at him. Crazy old man.

So Lot took his wife and his daughters and they were fleeing

the city and his wife loved Sodom, no knowing exactly what

Sodom was. His wife loved Sodom so much

that she turned around and was longing to return to Sodom and

God took her life. So it was Lot and his daughters.

They fled to a small town 1st and then Lot was afraid there

and so they fled up into the mountains and Lot's daughters

said, Dang, I probably should have said that in church.

Rats said we're out here in the mountains.

Our fiancees are dead. Our dad has us up here in the

mountains. We don't have any kids.

Dad's not Dad's a drunk. He was.

We need someone to carry on after us.

We need kids. So what did Lot's daughters do?

They raped their father. They got him drunk.

They had sex with him to get pregnant so they could have a

family of their own. If you don't think that's rape,

just flip it around. If Lot had said my daughters

need kids, I'll get him drunk and I'll sleep with him, it's

rape. His own family doing exactly the

same thing that those men were doing to the angels or wanted to

do to the angels. Every heart, every thought

inclined to evil all the time. Just after having seen the city

be destroyed, they said the best solution to our problem is rape.

Detestable things, all manner of detestable things, become very

real possibilities and actual realities when we commit to a

life of arrogant prosperity and cold hearted indifference.

That's the real sin of Sodom. That's the culture and

civilization and mindset that we as the Church of Jesus Christ

are called to stand against and live against and love against in

Jesus name, Amen. Amen.