Genesis: Is Our Record the Only Record to Stand On?

What a strange story.

I mean, it's like God and Abraham are haggling over a hammock in a Guatemalan market, and I use that example because I've haggled over a hammock in a Guatemalan market before, and this is exactly what it feels like.

It's bizarre.

I mean, it's just a bizarre conversation.

The whole the whole story is bizarre, a little bit before it and a little bit after it.

I mean, this whole story is just absolutely bizarre.

Abraham is talking to God, but uh he's not just talking to God.

He's actually, as he's talking, he's sort of figuring something out about God.

He's he's seeing something.

So I love to go to the beach.

Probably most of you in here love to go to the beach, and so we like to go to Hilton Head, and so a lot of times we don't stay right on the beach.

You're in like a neighborhood, maybe a block or two off, and so you drive there, you drive to the house, you unpack, and the first thing I want to do, not sure about you, is I want to go and see the ocean.

So you, you know, maybe you hadn't even got everything unpacked, but you're gonna go walk, and so you walk down the block, you cross the street, you walk through that little path, and then the dunes are there, so you can't quite see the ocean yet, but you're going up that boardwalk, up and over, and so you see the blue sky, and then you see the horizon, you see the beginning of that vast, wonderful, beautiful, huge ocean, and this is the moment where Abraham turns around.

Why are you turning around?

Why would you turn around at this point?

This is not the moment you turn around.

This is the moment where you keep going.

Like you keep going.

Like, don't stop at 10.

Let's go to five, three, two, like one.

What if there's one righteous person?

Would you would you let everybody off for one?

Like this is the point, right, where you're on the boardwalk.

You don't turn around.

Like you are going and you want to see the waves up on the sand, you want to put your feet in the water, like you want to see it all.

But Abraham turns around.

And you're just going, like, why did he do this?

And for us, this is the greatness of this passage, because for us, if we can understand what was going on with Abraham, if we can if we can get an idea perhaps of what Abraham was feeling and why he would possibly stop this conversation.

If we can get that, I think we leave here having a deeper understanding of the character of God.

So there's two main ideas going on in this passage for us to consider.

Before we get to the first one, a little bit of background.

So God is going to come down to judge Sodom and Gomorrah because there's an outcry from the people.

So people are being abused, they're being violated, they're being crushed, and God says, I'm going to go down, I'm going to see if this needs judgment.

Maybe you're here going, ah, hold on.

The welcome, you did that greeting about God's love, and that was fantastic.

And now you're talking about judgment.

I'm not sure about this.

I'm not sure if I believe in a judging God.

Perhaps you're thinking that, but uh, people are being abused and violated and crushed.

And I don't I'm I'm not even close to a righteous person, but if that's going on in my backyard, like something's being done.

I mean, much less a perfect, holy, righteous God and that's going on, something's going to be done.

And a holy God has the right to judge.

He has the right to rid evil.

It is his right.

And if you have a God that never judges, how can that God ever be gracious?

If you have a God that never judges, and you have a God that never can be gracious, and perhaps you just have a God that's an idea.

Like you just made a God of an idea that you had, not actually of a divine being that exists.

In Genesis 18, 22, it says that Abraham stood close to the Lord, and then in verse 23, it says that Abraham drew near to the Lord.

It's a little strange.

I thought he was close, he was close to the Lord, like in verse 22, and then verse 23, he's drawing near to the Lord.

So what's the difference here?

You know, like was he 24 inches and now he's 10 inches?

I don't know.

Well, verse 23, this word draw near is a legal term.

It means he approached the bench.

So uh so Abraham is becoming the legal representation of these people.

He's going before God to plead on their behalf.

And so I'll reread some as we go through this.

Verse 24, he approaches the bench.

What if there are 50 righteous people in this city, God?

Like what if there's fifty?

Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it?

Far be it from you to do such a thing, to kill the righteous with the wicked.

I mean, treating the righteous and the wicked alike.

Far be it from you.

Will not the judge of all the earth do what is right?

And the Lord said, Well, if I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.

And so, see, Abraham is looking for pardon for everyone.

He's looking for them to be spared, and that word, to be forgiven.

And so at the same time, he's praying and he's asking, he's exploring, he's going into the character of God and saying, What's God like?

Like, is it all judgment here, or is there some grace inside this being?

What is God like?

How big is this ocean?

Is it 50?

Is it forty?

Is it 30?

Is it 20?

Right?

He works God down and then he ends up, for the sake of 10, I will not destroy it, is what God says.

And then the conversation ends.

What Abraham is asking over and over again is he's asking this, is our record all we have to go on?

Is our record all we have to go on?

So a friend of mine who lives in Virginia, he was in a musical with his daughter.

She's about nine, ten years old.

He was in a musical with her, so he had driven up there with her, a second car from their family, his wife, their child, and mother-in-law.

They came in a second car, the musical happens, you know, kid throws up on stage, some classic elementary school musical activity going on, and the musical's over, and he thinks the whole family's going home in the other car and he's just by himself.

So he finishes.

He's performed his great musical performance in the elementary school musical, and he gets in his car, and he goes home, he gets home, he walks in the door, and in there is mother-in-law and one daughter, meaning now he realizes his cell phone's been turned off for 20 minutes, and he left his wife and the other daughter back at school, so he's feeling really bad about himself.

And so he rushes back out, hops back in the cool mini-man that he has, and he gets on the highway and he's flying down the highway, and he sees blue lights.

He gets pulled over.

Now he realizes he was going 25 over, and then he realizes in Virginia, 25 over is reckless driving, and then he realizes in Virginia, reckless driving can be up to six months in prison.

Or you could lose your license for six months, or you could be fined.

And so he's been building this portfolio, this his record of all the good things he has done in his life, his activity in his church, his business.

He works with the CIA and the Navy, he's accumulating all this.

He has letters from like, you know, people high up in the government.

I mean, he's got this portfolio to present to the judge, but part of the problem is he has two other speeding tickets in the last two years.

His record just it's not perfect.

Now what if?

What if he got in, what if he got into the courtroom?

And what if the judge looks over his record and it's some good and it's some bad, and what if the judge looked at it and the judge says, Your record's not perfect.

You know, if we were to judge you by the law, you're you will be punished.

But actually, I have a perfect driving record, and let's just switch out.

Like, what if that was possible?

What if there was a record that was not ours that could be given to us?

That's what Abraham is asking.

Is our record all we have to go on?

Or could there be ten people's record that could represent all these other people?

But Abraham then he just hits ten, and it's like the absurdity of it.

And maybe he's realizing, like, I know people in this town and Lot, I know Lot, he's my nephew, and he's probably the best guy in there, and I know Lot, he's not that great of a guy.

And so maybe Abraham hits that point and he thinks about just the questions he's asking, and he's realizing, well, nobody's really righteous anyways, so this line of thinking is not even worth it.

And he just stops.

Conversation ends.

Uh, Pastor author Tim Keller, he says this it's like Abraham found a route through God's perfect justice, how to move people through the mountain, but then the route closed in.

Don't you you just we just want Abraham, we just want him to say, Holy God, I will speak one more time, how amazing you are, how just you are, how perfect you are, how imperfect we are.

Is it possible that this city could be saved based on one person's righteousness?

And then you sort of want him to have all the knowledge in the New Testament and all the knowledge of Paul's letters and about Jesus, and him to say, is it possible that you would provide the righteousness for this city?

And that's the first main idea here is that our record is not the record we stand on.

That the judge did switch the records for us.

And he gave us his son's record.

So there's one more piece to this strange story.

It comes along in Genesis 19.

2.

Angels came to Sodom in the evening, and so Lot sees these angels and their men.

They walk in, they're they're, and he sees them and sees them as visitors, so he welcomes them into his house.

He's feed them, you know, uh, let them wash up, sleep at his house, and all the men of the city, they know these visitors have come, and so all these men show up at Lot's house, and they want to rape these men.

They're there to abuse these men.

And Lot gets out of the house and he's outside there, and he's arguing with the men.

Please go away, leave, you know, leave these men, their visitors, please treat them decently with some dignity, and they're pushing against Lot and they're pushing against the door, and finally, those two angels they reach out and they pull Lot in, and then uh they they blind blindness goes over all the men of the city.

And then the angels warn Lot and they say, It's time to go.

Like this place, this place is going down.

It's time for you and your family.

It is time to go.

And in Genesis 19, picking up in verse 16, it says this, when he, Lot, hesitated.

Isn't that interesting?

Isn't that interesting?

We'll do that.

The men grasped his hand and the hands of his wife and of his two daughters and led them safely out of the city, for the Lord was merciful to them.

As soon as they had brought them out, one of them said, Flee for your lives, don't look back, and don't stop anywhere in the plain.

Flee to the mountains, or you will be swept away.

And then we read in verse 26 of chapter 19, but Lot's wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.

Now we don't exactly know why she looked back.

I mean, we sort of uh we know she was behind Lot and she looks back, and somehow she gets caught up in this destruction, uh, but she looks back, so she gets caught up, and we don't know exactly how all that played out, but I don't think we should get too self-righteous about this because she had four daughters and only two are with her.

And the other two are married and they're back in the city burning to death.

And her home's burning to death.

The only life she's ever known is burning.

And this is where it gets interesting for us.

As I was just thinking about it this week, because there's just so much for us to look back at.

I mean, there's there's failed marriages, there's broken friendships, there's addiction to control or power that strained all the relationships in your life, and we keep reliving it over and over and over again what you should have done or what you could have done.

I mean, we'll relive like that mistake from 30 years ago or three days ago or three hours ago and just replay it over and over and over again.

I will I will replay physical sexual sins from 20 years ago.

I know you do that.

Because you're like me.

Or maybe you replay that season of your life, you had that eating disorder, you were so filled with fear and anxiety, you're distancing yourself from God in every possible way, and so self-consumed in that addiction.

Or maybe it's just that that mistake where you just let everyone down.

It was that word you said, or that email.

And if even if you told somebody, like if you told somebody the story, they'd say, No, it's not that big of a deal.

But just the fact that you let that person down, you replay it over and over and over again, and that's that looking back.

And when we do this, when we look back like that, it gives functional power of past sin and mistakes over us in the present moment.

So you can't enjoy today, you can't be present today or walk in the spirit today, because you are functionally being uh controlled by something in the past.

This weekend we were uh maybe 20 men, we we went camping on a men's retreat.

And I was talking with uh my friend Rod, who's he's 60 years old, he was the speaker, the pastor and the speaker for the weekend, and then my friend Kurt, he's a pastor of another church, and the three of us were talking, and you get pastors around each other.

Bill knows this, he's pastor.

We love talking to each other.

It is just because it's like we understand each other, you know, we'll talk about the certain pressures we feel or whatever.

And we were just talking, and and Kurt had several years ago, Kurt had told me, and he likes to call me Rusty.

A few people call me Rusty, and he he said, Rusty, you you sure play your cards close to your chest.

I can remember when he said this, I think I told Christy this when he said, I just remember thinking, like, what's he talking about?

Like, I didn't even understand it.

When he said it, I didn't I didn't even it didn't register.

I didn't even understand it.

And it's just in the last couple of years, I mean, like his that statement to me, it hasn't burned me.

It's just been so interesting to me as I've been thinking about it, and then the Lord has slowly been showing me, I really do this.

Like this, what I'm doing here is easy.

Like, but I don't know if I want you to know me like personally, because what if you reject me?

Right?

So like I'll draw a circle, like, and and like just a few people get to come into the circle.

And then everybody else is on the outside.

And you do the same thing, right?

Like you draw that circle and you self-protect because of whatever in the past, and only certain people are gonna get in.

And so Rod said something to me.

He said, uh, oh, we begin to talk about how um how it's so hard for us to just just receive love, just in general, just to receive love.

Like somebody loving you, for somebody to look you square in the eye, and not say like, hey, love you, man, like love you, bro, but look you in the eye and say, I love you.

And there's been, I think I counted, there's been probably four men, like father figure men in my life, who have done that, you know, who would look, would look me in the eye.

I love you, Russ.

And every time these men do it, it makes me squirm.

I don't know what to do with it.

Like it makes me so uncomfortable.

I think some of y'all are laughing, but you know, like you feel the same way.

It's just so hard to receive it.

I there's so much hesitation to open up that circle and to let somebody in.

And that's part of that.

I don't know what all that means.

It's me sharing a story.

I don't know if it even has an end to it or a point to it.

Because I don't know, I'm still that the Lord's still working in me about that.

What does that mean?

And how am I how am I looking back and how's that affecting this?

I don't know, but I I know I do that.

I know I hold I hold my cards pretty close to my chest in that regard.

And even even at the end of the weekend, Rod he he hugged me, like a real hug, like, you know, like cheeks.

Cheeks were pressed.

You know what I'm talking about, like not like the hey man, but like full cheeks press, and then he and then he kissed me on the cheek.

And I think there's been three father figure men that have done that.

And that makes me just, I don't know what to do with it.

But all all of this is how the Lord, if we let him, see, the own the only way that the grace of God and the gospel comes into us and changes us is when we let it come into the cracks, into our brokenness.

In other words, it doesn't come in.

It only comes in through the brokenness.

And so it's by discovering and being willing to go, oh wow, that I'm I was wounded that way, or I'm sinful that way, or I had that mistake.

I still relive that and I replay that, or I'm just looking back in that way.

So I was trying to get some words around this, trying to think, how do I think about it, how do I communicate this?

And it seems to me it looks like maybe there's two ways of looking back.

You know, there's a looking back where you're looking back, and this is what Lot's wife was doing.

She was looking back for hope and for meaning.

And the angel said, Don't look back, like look forward for your hope and your meaning.

You're looking forward to the mountains, like for the rescue.

And then there's this other way that I think, I don't think Lot forgot his two daughters that were back there.

So there can be a looking back where you're remembering, but you're not defined by it.

Like you're remembering it so that you might be healed while you're looking forward, because you know you know you've been rescued, even while you're messed up, you know you've been rescued.

So even though practically you're not perfect, positionally, you are perfect in his beloved.

So the question is just like, will you let the Lord into these places?

How long will you keep self-protecting and ignoring and pretending and performing?

And I just want to say, you can stop.

2 Corinthians 5, verse 14 says this.

2 Corinthians 5:14

It's not in your bulletin, you just listen, for Christ's love compels us.

Because we are convinced that one, right?

Like not 40 or 30 or 20 or 10, one died for all.

And therefore all died.

And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and was raised again.

So from now on, we regard no one from a worldly point of view.

Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.

Therefore, anyone is in Christ.

The new creation has come, the old has gone, the new is here.

See, there's a new life, there's a new way of living, of justifying your life, of being righteous, of being God's beloved, and it's by the one representing the rest of us.

That we are now in Christ and Christ is in us, and the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, is in us, and it is not a spirit of fear.

There's a spirit of life and of boldness that heals.

Who told you you are your own record?

Who told you that?

Who told you you're the size of your waste or the size of your bank account?

Who told you that you're your failures?

Who told you that you are the amount of likes on your Instagram?

Who told you that?

Who told you you are anything except the beloved of the one who brought you out of Sodom?

See, Abraham almost got it.

He almost saw the ocean.

He was almost there.

He was at 10, right?

Like he was so close.

But he just couldn't conceive that this Almighty, holy God that he was bargaining with could possibly be the one that would provide the way.

That he would step into the dirty, messy creation, into our dirty, messy lives, and he would provide the righteousness and the rescue we need.

Let's pray together.

God, we thank you that your grace is enough for us.

And we confess that not only do we abuse in ways, and we crush in ways, whether it be our words or behaviors or motives or thoughts, we also look back.

We look at this story and we remember that we deserve something that you are not going to give us.

And we thank you.

That you put our sin upon yourself, upon Jesus.

And in him we died.

So that in him we might live.

Would you give us the courage to let your grace and truth and love seep into the cracks and brokenness that are inside of us that we might experience healing?

Know you in greater ways, this character, this vast ocean of justice and love.

And would you increase our trust that our lives might honor you in all ways?

In Jesus' name.

Amen.