Faithful Then, Faithful Now | Walking with God - Genesis 18-19(Feb 12) Myles Holmes

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God through the fulfillment of the Great Commission and the Spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

Father, I pray that it is the longing of every heart here for that day, Lord.

God, we rejoice and exalt in you through singing, God, because of that truth that we can declare that despite our sinfulness, despite the many ways we fail regularly, Lord.

Despite our inability to stand before such a holy God, Lord, there is a day coming where we will see you face to face.

And God, we declare now, Lord, that it's all because of the blood of your Son Jesus Christ, all because of the righteousness that he lived on our behalf, and all because of the penalty he paid for our sin.

And so, God, we give you all the praise, we give you all the thanks, and we pray, Lord, that in response to all that Jesus has done for us, God, our desire would be to live for you.

God, that you would find here in this church a people whose heart are set on fire with a passion for your name, with a desire to glorify you in our lives, to walk with you day to day, God.

And so as we open up your word, Lord, I pray that you would help us, God.

Give us your instruction.

God, this is your word to us.

God, you're a God who loves to speak, you love to reveal.

And so find here are people who love to listen and to change accordingly.

God, we lift this morning to you and pray that you would be exalted.

We pray this all in the name of your son.

Amen.

Amen.

You can grab a seat.

As you grab your seat, you can take your copy of God's word.

I hope that you have it with you.

As we love to get into God's word in this church and open it up to Genesis chapter 18.

Genesis 18 · chapter mention

While you're opening to Genesis chapter 18 and 19, I want to put before you our worship and prayer night that's happening this Wednesday here at ANOVA at 7 p.m.

Genesis 18 · chapter mention

We are a church that believes firmly in the power of prayer.

We believe that when we call out to God, God listens and he always answers our prayers.

Either what we ask or in even a better way.

And so we believe that we never waste any time when we gather together as a church to lift up our prayers with Him.

In fact, we were the men, many of the men at this church were at a men's conference uh about a week and a half ago, and one of the pastors said this.

I think it's so good.

He said, Without prayer, we're dead.

Can you turn to your neighbor and say that?

Tell your neighbor, without prayer, you're dead.

Without prayer, you're dead.

I love that.

And that's so true about our church.

Without prayer, we may as well be a dead church.

And so I want to put that before you this Wednesday at 7 p.m.

Mark it on your calendars, prioritize it.

It's going to be a good time together.

With your Bibles open at Genesis 18, I wonder if you've ever noticed that our culture really has a fascination with walking with God and what that would be like.

Many of the conversations I have with unbelievers really start here with this question of like, well, you know, as I ask them, why don't you believe?

They say, Well, I've never seen God.

Like if I could see God in this room physically, if I could walk with him, if I could even just ask him a question, then maybe I would believe.

Not only that, there's kind of like this insatiable book market for supposed experiences of people who have been with God, who have walked with God.

And if you're able to write a book where you can tell people what it's like to walk with God, you're really able to get on the bestseller and sell millions because there's this hunger, this appetite to know what it would be like to be with God.

And the astounding news that I want us to meditate on this morning, as we are in Genesis chapter 18 and 19, is that God desires us to know what it is like to walk with Him.

Genesis 18 · chapter mention

That's God's heart too.

And the question for us is as that's God's heart, as God reveals to us what it's like to walk with him, what it should be like to be in relationship with him, the question for us is are we willing to listen and then pursue God?

And so last week we were in Genesis 17, and you'll remember that God appeared to Abraham there in verse 1, and he said, I am God Almighty, walk before me.

Walk before me.

God had given Abraham this command.

So then it's astounding that in chapter 18, look what happens.

It says, The Lord appeared to him by the oaks of Memori.

And he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of his day, of the day.

See, God commands Abraham to walk with him, and then God appears with Abraham to show Abraham exactly what it looks like to walk with him.

Now we're told here that one of these servants is the Lord.

We're told again in verse 22, skip ahead really quickly.

It says, So the men turned from there and went towards Sodom, but Abraham stood, still stood before the Lord.

Here is Abraham now in Genesis chapter 18 and 19, standing before the Lord, and the Lord has this lesson for Abraham, and ultimately has this lesson for us this morning, thousands of years later.

Genesis 18 · chapter mention

And the lesson is this what does it look like to walk with God?

If Abraham is called by God Almighty, El Shaddai, to walk with God, then the question is, why should he?

What's compelling about that?

What does it look like?

This is the grace of God to call us to obedience and then to show us the sweetness of obedience's pursuit.

God calls us down a path of walking with him, and then he shows us the reality and the sweetness of walking with him.

And so I want you to see that in Genesis chapter 18 and 19 this morning.

Genesis 18 · chapter mention

That when I walk with God, this is what I find.

Now, we're not going to read this text because there's a lot to cover here in Genesis 18 and 19.

So we're going to walk through it this morning together.

But the first thing I want you to see is that when I walk with God, I find boundless blessing.

When I walk with God, I find boundless blessing.

Now, this is always the case for every Christian.

This is a true reality for your soul this morning, that the path of greatest blessing is always the path that God commends to you.

If you want to know how to live the life of ultimate blessing, fulfillment, and satisfaction, the needful thing to do is to set your eyes on the Lord and ask, what does God want of me?

See, to choose to walk with God is to choose God's boundless blessing to be poured over your life.

And yet often it seems like it's the opposite, doesn't it?

The reason why we struggle, as Joel said, in this battle, battling for the Lord, struggling against our sin, fighting our sin, desiring to experience that victory, is because so often we feel like blessing can be found somewhere else.

So often we feel like true joy, true satisfaction will be found somewhere outside of the word and will of God.

We know this to be true by experience, otherwise, don't we?

That sometimes there are really good things for us to do that we know it would be good for us to do that we just don't do.

One of my hobbies is to go to the gym.

You can't tell by looking at me, but I love to go to the gym.

And I know by experience that it is good to stretch.

Many of our the men in our church play hockey, and I've started to pray because over the last three weeks, three men in our church have been injured at hockey, and so I'm starting to think maybe something, you know, someone's out for us.

Maybe this is like spiritual warfare, taking out our men one by one.

But we know that it's good to stretch.

Every time I've stretched, I've said, wow, it's almost as though God created muscles and tendons to be stretched.

I feel amazing.

But then the next day I go to the gym again and I don't want to stretch.

Now, this is maybe a silly illustration to illustrate that as human beings, oftentimes we're told where the path of greatest blessing is, but we struggle to believe it.

And it's infinitely more true of our walk with the Lord.

The Lord has told us the path of boundless blessing.

And it's often we struggle to believe it.

This is what Abraham discovers when he finds himself in chapter 18 in the presence of these three servants, two of which are angels, and one of which is the Lord.

Notice that Abraham immediately treats his guests as though they are significant.

And so he does not usher them out.

I don't know about you, but if I was sitting sleepily one day on my front porch, and I open my eyes, and all of a sudden there are three strangers there, I would be quick to usher them out.

Not so with Abraham.

Abraham knows that these guests that he has are significant, and so in verses 3 to 8, he invites them in, he makes them food, he asks them to stay with him and dine with him.

And in verses 9 and 10, he immediately receives the blessing of being in the presence of God and these servants.

So look what it says in verse 9.

They said to him, the end of the day, as they're eating, Where is Sarah, your wife?

And he said, She's in the tent.

And notice the blessing that Abraham receives, a reminder of the promise of the work that God would do in him.

The Lord said, I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.

God reminds Sarah and Abraham that because he is present, his promise is going to be fulfilled.

See, the birth of a child was both Sarah's desire and God's promise from the beginning.

And in the presence of the Lord, Sarah and Abraham are reminded that God is going to work powerfully in their life.

God is going to bring about this blessing for them.

Now remember, the plot line of Abraham and Sarah's story is really to discover how God is going to bring about these three promises that he had given to them in Genesis chapter 12.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

God had promised that Abraham, three things.

One, that Abraham would be the father of many nations, that God would provide a land for Abraham's children.

And that Abraham would be a blessing to the nations.

And so here God is reminding them of that promise that Sarah will birth a son, even though it seems impossible.

Now, Sarah's response is instructive for us.

Look at how Sarah responds in verse 10.

It says, Sarah was listening at the tent door behind him.

Now, Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years.

The way of the woman had ceased to be with Sarah, so Sarah laughed to herself.

The response of Sarah is to laugh.

It's this instinctual response, kind of like this response that comes from Sarah's gut, as though like what God has promised that about that that is about to happen is utterly preposterous.

Sarah hears God's promise and says, Yeah, right, God.

There is no way that walking with you, you're gonna bless me in this way.

It's just impossible.

So look at Sarah so immediately has a threefold, a three-reason argument why it's impossible.

Sarah laughs and then she lays out this argument as to why it is impossible for her and Abraham to have a son.

Notice that Moses informs us that Abraham and Sarah were old and advanced in years.

In many ways, this is biologically possible.

If that's not enough, the way of the woman had ceased to be with Sarah.

The writer is telling us is that Sarah is past her age of being able to birth a child.

It's not physically possible anymore.

So Sarah laughs and even responds to the Lord and says, After I'm worn out and my Lord is old, shall I have pleasure?

And what Sarah is even saying there is, they're not even doing the baby-making activity anymore.

I had to decide how I was gonna bring up that idea without getting explicit, which I'm learning in Genesis, you have to work around a lot of rather explicit things.

Sarah says, it's not biologically act possible anymore.

We're not even trying to make babies anymore.

We just don't do that anymore.

And so, God, how are you gonna do this?

I want you to see this, church.

This is the natural condition of our heart.

When God makes a promise to us, our natural response is to respond like Sarah.

It is hard for our heart to warm up to the idea, our cold heart to warm up to the idea that on the path that God calls us to walk, that to walk with God is the path of greatest blessing.

It's our heart's tendency to believe that satisfaction, that happiness, that peace, that fulfillment, that blessing must be found somewhere other than in God.

God preaches to us this gospel that the path of boundless blessing is found when we walk with Him, but our hearts, like Sarah, laugh at the possibility.

That's why I love the old hymn that says that as believers, we're prone to wander.

Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.

Because as believers, we're prone to wander off the path that God calls us to live, thinking that there is greener grass elsewhere.

We're prone to wander off the path of God's greatest blessing, thinking that maybe we can find satisfaction, maybe we can find peace, maybe we can find relief from our anxiety, maybe we can find relief from the battle against our sin somewhere other than what God has where God has called us.

On the path of obedience.

See, really, the story of Abraham and Sarah is really a story of faith that leads to obedience, that in turn leads then to God's blessing.

This is how faith works.

Faith believes that the path of greatest blessing is the path of obedience.

Faith drives me to obedience because I believe that it's the source of God's blessing.

So I love what one pastor says.

David Hegg says this.

This is going to come up on the screen.

He defines faith like this.

He says, faith is a life-dominating conviction that all God has for me through obedience is better by far than anything Satan can offer me through selfishness and sin.

This is what faith is.

Faith believes that what God says is best for us.

And so then it pursues God's path.

See, when Sarah hears of the blessing that God is going to bring about as Abraham and Sarah walk with him, she laughs because she lacks the faith to believe that walking with God is the source of boundless blessing.

And her laughter is the same unbelief that drives us away from doing things like reading God's word, thinking that our time might be spent better elsewhere.

It's the same type of spiritual laughter that might drive us away from meeting with God's people, thinking that maybe it's necessary for other people to live in community, but we can kind of isolate ourselves and still do really well.

And so look at what God's response to Sarah is in verse 14.

It's to remind Sarah of the one who's making the promise.

You see what he says there?

Is anything too hard for the Lord?

Is anything too hard for the Lord?

God looks to Sarah and says, Hey, says, Hey, remember who I am?

I'm El Shaddai.

I'm God Almighty.

I'm the one who can accomplish this.

I'm powerful to pour out on you, God says to us, the blessings that I have promised for you when you walk in the way of obedience.

This is what God wants to show you here this morning: that to walk with him is to secure his boundless blessing.

This is why God invites us into his mind in verse 17.

As the men set out, they look down towards Sodom, they're heading towards Sodom and Gomorrah, and Abraham goes with them.

And look at then what the Lord does.

The Lord said, Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?

And in this moment, we just we really need to ask, why does God do that?

Why does God invite us in this moment into his mind?

Why, as the readers of Genesis 18, do we get the opportunity to go inside the mind of God as he considers whether or not he should let Abraham into this little secret about what he's going to do in Sodom and Gomorrah?

Now in verse 17, the Lord asks the question, but in verses 18 to 19, he answers it.

He says, ask the question, shall I hide from Abraham what I'm about to do?

But then in 18 he answers in himself, seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations on the earth shall be blessed in him.

Notice that first, in answer to his question, what the Lord does is go back to his covenant promise that he made to Abraham.

Do you remember what the covenant promise was?

That through Abraham's family, that Abraham's family would be a blessing to the nations.

And so the Lord goes back to the covenant that he made in Genesis 12, that he ratified in Genesis 15, to say, I've covenanted to Abraham.

God's response is, of course I should let Abraham into this secret.

Of course I should walk in intimate union with Abraham because I've poured out my covenant love on Abraham.

I've committed myself to Abraham.

Verse 19, God then goes to the second promise that he made to Abraham in Genesis 12.

He says, For I have chosen him that he may command his children and household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him.

Abraham goes to this, the Lord then dwells on the second promise that Abraham would be made the father of many nations.

And the answer after this is clear.

That the reason why the Lord should tell Abraham what he is about to do is because he has poured out his covenant love on Abraham.

And that should lead God and his people to walk with integrity, to walk with openness, to walk with vulnerability.

What God's doing right here is modeling for Abraham how Abraham should walk with him.

This is the kind of love that God had expected Abraham would return to him.

An openness, a vulnerability, an intimacy.

But up until this point, Abraham and Sarah had failed to show God this kind of love.

They had failed to turn to the Lord.

They had failed to walk with the Lord.

This is why God gave them the command in chapter 17 to walk with him.

And what does he say after?

Be blameless.

In other words, Abraham saying, or God saying to Abraham, Stop screwing up.

Walk with me as you should.

So that here he models what it looks like to walk with him.

That to walk with him is to enjoy intimacy with him.

Which leads us to our next point.

That when I walk with God, I find intimate intercession.

When I walk with God, I find intimate intercession.

Notice again in the story, because of God's relentless commitment to his people, despite their ongoing sin, Abraham in verse 22 still finds himself in the presence of the Lord.

So that as the men turn to go towards Sodom, it says in verse 22, Abraham still stood before the Lord.

Abraham here enters into dialogue with God.

But I want you to notice, church, that it is God's desire for Abraham to enter into this intimate intercession, to enter into this prayerful conversation.

See, it's not just the fact that Abraham is in the presence of God.

What's happening here is Abraham is enjoying this sweet and intimate union with God here.

Abraham's showing us that to walk with God is to walk in this sweet relationship and fellowship and union where we talk to God and God responds to us.

To walk with God is to experience God.

And at this point, I just feel the need to slow down and ask this question.

To ask you if your experience with the Lord, to ask if your experience with Christianity has been like Abraham's?

I want to ask you this question.

Have you experienced the person of Jesus Christ?

As you consider your Christianity, as you consider your faith, is it a relationship with a living God?

This is what Abraham is modeling for us here.

That to be a Christian, that to be a child of God is to experience and enjoy regular and intimate connection with the Lord.

But the issue is that sometimes we make Christianity all about these other things.

Instead of Christianity being about a relationship, what we make it is about all these external things.

And it completely lacks the relationship element, it completely lacks the intimacy, the desire for the Lord to draw near to you.

And instead we just make it about a bunch of checkbox things.

I gotta show up to church on Sunday.

I gotta make sure I do my daily reading.

I gotta serve.

We have all these things that we kind of we feel the desire, the need to do, but that lacks a desire to do it in order that we might draw nearer to God.

That's why we heard the testimony of a man who was baptized just a few short weeks ago who grew up in the church and lived in the church for almost 18 years before experiencing intimate union and relationship with the Lord.

And do you know that it is possible to be in church, to be around Christians who are experiencing this without ever experiencing it yourself?

It's like what Jonathan Edwards describes.

He says that following Christ is like experiencing the taste of honey.

Could you imagine the difference?

If just imagine for a moment that you had never tasted what honey is like, what it tastes like.

And imagine trying to understand what it's like just by someone describing it to you.

Well, you wouldn't really know.

But there's something different when you actually experience the taste, when you actually experience the sweetness, when you feel it on your tongue, it's entirely different.

And the way that God wants us to walk with him is in the experience of sweet and intimate union and communion and relationship with him.

This is the core of the Christian faith.

To follow God is to know God in intimate union.

And this is the intimate intercession that Abraham now enjoys.

See, Abraham, he hears God's plan in verse 20 that because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave, God is going down to bring judgment and destruction to Sodom and Gomorrah.

But look at what Abraham does upon hearing God's plan.

Look at it in verse 23.

I want your eyes on the text.

If you have your Bible in front of you, look at these words, underline them, circle them, because they are so beautiful.

It says, Then Abraham drew near.

Then Abraham drew near.

All the times that Abraham had failed, all the times that Abraham looked much more like Sodom and Gomorrah than he did like God's own child.

All the times that Abraham's weakness should have driven him away, and yet here he is drawing near to the God who is about to judge the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah, and not turned away, but invited by God to draw near into this conversation.

You see the sweetness of this church?

This is the relationship that God invites you into.

God invites you to draw nearer to Him.

God invites you to enjoy sweet fellowship and relationship with Him.

It shouldn't be this way.

In light of the fact that we are sinful, standing before a holy God, it should not be possible for us to draw near.

And yet it is God's desire because of his covenant love for us, it is his desire to draw near to us.

This is why James draws on the promise in James 4.8.

He says this, draw near to God.

And church, you know the verse.

What happens?

What happens when you draw near to God?

God draws near to you.

It's not like when you're in your house and someone knocks on the door, you don't know who it is, so you're hiding behind the couch.

You're thinking, oh man, I hope they don't think I'm home.

The millennials really get that.

That's not how God responds to you.

Instead, you know what happens?

Every time you draw near to the Lord, He draws near to you.

And so this is my question for you right now.

Do a heart check.

Heart check right now.

In this moment.

Is it your desire, in this very moment, to draw near to God?

You know what happens so often?

We just we just come to church.

We just come to do it.

Like this is what we're supposed to do.

We're Christians, we're just supposed to do it, but we lose the reality that if in this moment your heart's desire is to draw near to God, you know what God's gonna do to you?

He's gonna draw near to you.

Let me ask you this morning: did you come with a desire to worship God because you wanted to draw near to him?

Because you knew the best place that you could be on a Sunday morning is with God's people, worshiping him, singing his praise, drawing near to him.

Or did you just kind of come and just kind of do it?

Like this is what we're supposed to do.

Now we sing, now we sit.

In this moment, as we listen to God's word, is it your eager heart's desire to draw near to him through his word, through the preaching of his word?

This is what makes the difference between real, life-giving, intimate, sweet faith and dead faith.

Notice that Abraham he enjoys this intimate intercession with God, and so there is this back and forth between them.

And the petition that God has for, that Abraham has for God really plays on this profound problem of God's justice and mercy.

See, Abraham pleads with God on the basis of his mercy, making this argument.

If the city of Sodom is destroyed, if the city of Sodom is destroyed while there are innocent and righteous people in it, then God has failed to be merciful to the righteous that are in there.

But if the cities are not destroyed, and those who deserve God's judgment are then spared, then God really can't be just.

And there's this kind of problem here, this problem of what you hold up, the mercy of God or the judgment of God.

The petition then of Abraham is to plead with the Lord to save the whole city for the sake of a righteous few.

To which God agrees in verse 26.

Look what he says in verse 26.

The Lord said, If I find at Sodom 50 righteous in the city, I will spare the whole place for their sake.

It's really quite an amazing request by Abraham.

Even though the whole city deserves judgment, God, spare the whole city if you just find 50 people.

God decides to spare the city for the sake of the righteous.

And Abraham continues throughout these verses to work God down five at a time until eventually God agrees at the end in verse 32 that if there are just ten righteous found, the Lord answers, for the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.

I want you to notice something, church, that as Abraham enjoys this intimate intercession with God, you notice that God answers his prayer every time.

God answers his prayer every time.

He hears Abraham's prayer.

But the interesting thing is that as we kind of carry on throughout the story and we see what happens as God judges Sodom, that in many ways Abraham's prayer does not get the immediate answer he's looking for.

When God goes to Sodom, he won't find ten righteous.

If we're to count it up, it's about four.

Sodom will be judged and destroyed.

But at the end, what happens is God delivered, God does deliver one city on account of Lot and his family's righteousness.

At the end of, or sorry, in verse 20 of chapter 19, as Lot is escaping from Sodom, Lot asked these servants if he can take refuge in a city that is near enough for him to flee to.

And the servants say to him, Behold, I will grant you this favor also, that I will not overthrow the city which you have spoken of.

Escape there quickly, for I can do nothing till you arrive there.

And it says, Therefore the name of the city was called Zoar.

Abraham's prayer that the city would be delivered for the sake of the righteous is answered only in a miniature way.

But I want you to notice something even more significant.

That in the future, God would answer Abraham's prayer with even deeper grace.

You know what God would do in light of the covenant love that he had shown Abraham?

Eventually, God would save even more people than the city of Sodom.

For the sake of a righteous few, even less than ten.

Eventually there would come one righteous man.

And his name was Jesus Christ, and he was the truly righteous man.

And God would look at the righteousness of this one man, and for the sake of his righteousness, God would choose not to judge and condemn thousands upon millions of people who then place their faith in Jesus Christ.

God fulfills the prayer of Abraham through Jesus with even deeper grace.

God would send his own son to save the world.

Jesus Christ Himself.

And God would choose to save more than just a city on behalf of the merit and righteousness of Jesus.

God would choose to save all who place their faith in him.

And I just want you to take this moment to recognize, church, that when Abraham prays, God answers his prayer in the intimate intercession that Abraham enjoys.

God answers his prayer with even greater grace than Abraham could imagine.

And I need you to know that the same is true for you.

Whenever you pray, God always answers your prayer with greater grace than you could imagine.

This is why Paul started to pray.

He had such an understanding of God's grace, overflowing great grace in his life, that Paul would pray like this in Ephesians 3.20.

He would say, Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or think.

According to the power at work within us.

That's how Paul realized how he needed to pray.

God was so willing to answer prayers in his life that he would just say this, God, I know there are things that I can't even think of to ask that you are willing to answer.

And so I'm praying to that God, the God who is able to do far more abundantly than I could ask or think, than I could ever dream.

Abraham enjoys this reality, and you, as a follower of Christ, enjoy it too.

There's not been a single prayer that you have uttered that has not been answered with a deeper grace than what you asked for.

I love what Robert Murray McShane says.

He says, God will either give you what you ask or something far better.

And what we so often do is we try to prove God as though he's like not faithful to us because he's not answering our prayer exactly as we could have it.

But church, can't you kind of look back on your life and see, man, if God had answered all of our prayers according to the way we thought would work best, we'd be kind of screwed, wouldn't we?

God knows better than us.

And when we pray, he either answers us according to our prayer or he gives us something even better.

This is the grace of God.

And it's the intercession, the intimate intercession that we enjoy because of God's love for us.

God wants us to know the goodness of walking with him on an even deeper level.

That he hears us, that he answers our prayers.

Church, this is why we need to gather together as a church to pray together.

Because when we gather together as a church, God answers our prayer and acts according to our prayer or even better.

Every single time there has not been a single prayer that has been uttered at our worship and prayer nights that has not been answered by God with even greater grace than we could possibly ask or imagine.

Why?

Because we're not praying to a small God.

We're praying to El Shaddai, we're praying to God Almighty, we're praying to the God who can do anything that He desires.

God wants us to know the goodness of walking with Him on an even deeper level.

And so as we continue through Genesis 19, we find that when I walk with God, I find divine deliverance.

When I walk with God, I find divine deliverance.

This is because of who God is.

When we walk with God, we find deliverance from our greatest enemies because God at his very core is a redeemer.

He's a deliverer.

You know, as human beings, we just love to be in the presence of deliverers, don't we?

That's why in the last like 10 years, I feel like a billion cajillion movies, superhero movies, have been made.

And I'm not a big superhero movie person, so I'm probably gonna really offend some people here, which is okay.

I'm okay with offending the superhero movie nerds for a moment.

But all of these movies really have the same plot, don't they?

There's this big, larger-than-life superhero, and there's this problem, and you gotta wait like maybe an hour or an hour and a half until this superhero shows up and saves the day.

We know the plot of every movie.

I know there's one, like, you know, Avengers fan who's like, actually, Avengers 17 didn't have that plot, but okay, maybe there's one exception, but most of them are the same.

The exact same movie.

Superhero saving the day.

Why do we love it?

Because we love deliverance.

And what God wants us to know that in an even greater and more significant way, he is the deliverer from our greatest enemy, our true enemy, sin and death.

See, to walk with God is to walk with the one who, at his very nature, is able to deliver us from our greatest enemies.

But what we've discover in Genesis 19 is that just like Lot, instead of turning to God for deliverance, often we try to just deliver ourselves.

And so it's been the story of Abraham and Sarah, hasn't it?

That up until this point, really, Abraham and Sarah have been failing to trust that God would deliver him.

So that what does God do, what does Abraham do when he goes into Egypt?

Do you remember?

When Abraham goes into Egypt, fearful of Pharaoh, fearful that if Pharaoh finds out that Sarah is his wife, he might kill him.

Instead of trusting in the Lord to deliver him in that moment, what does Abraham do?

He trusts in his own plan.

Well, I'll just say that Sarah is my sister.

So we find in Genesis 16 that when Sarah is filled with anxiety about how God is going to bring about the covenant promise to birth a son, she, instead of waiting on the Lord, instead of trusting the Lord to do what he said, she goes her own way.

She tries to fulfill God's promise the means of a shortcut.

And this is really the story of Abraham and Sarah and Lot, that they continually, instead of trusting in God's deliverance, they try to seek their own.

So that in chapter 19, we find ourselves in Sodom, and it says in chapter 19, verse 1, that two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom.

And for Lot to be sitting in the gate of Sodom, like if you're a modern-day Israelite reading this, that's like some really gossipy, like that's some juicy gossip right there.

For Lot to be sitting at the gate of Sodom is to show that Lot is really trying to integrate himself into the life of Sodom.

The city gate was the place where the leaders sat, the city gate was the place where the philosophers sat.

And so if you wanted to be at the happening place, you got to the city gate.

And there is Lot sitting at the city gate when these servants arise.

And as Lot sees these servants, he immediately enters into the kind of like this inner warfare of who is he going to follow?

These servants that the Lord has delivered, or is he going to allow his love for Sodom to reign supreme?

When Lot sees them in verse 1, it says he saw them and he rose to meet them and bowed himself with his face to the earth.

And Lot responds correctly to the presence of these servants.

Just as Abraham invited them in to show them hospitality, so Lot in verse 3 presses them strongly, asking them to enter into his house.

As these servants enter into Lot's house, before the night is over, before the men enter into bed, Lot begins to experience what would become the worst night of his life.

In verse 4, it says, before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man surrounded the house.

Church, can you imagine this for a moment?

This is a whole city endeavor.

Every man to the very last man finds themselves outside of Lot's house.

And the whole city is gathered together for what purpose?

Look at verse 5.

They called out to Lot and they said, Where are the men who came to you tonight?

Bring them out to us that we may know them.

You see the wickedness of Sodom?

Every man to the very last man had gathered in front of Lot's door in order to engage in this perverse sexual activity with the guests that Lot had brought into his house.

Now not only is the city about to be destroyed, but Lot finds himself in the house with his servants, with his family, and the destruction of the city is pressing into his doorstep.

It's pushing on the door.

I wonder if Lot could hear the wood cracking, the destruction, the sinfulness of the city pressing into his house.

And so notice what Lot does in verse 6.

It says, Lot went out to the men at the entrance and shut the door after him.

Now this door kind of plays an important role in this story.

The door is talked about many times because the door signifies the separation between the righteous people that are in the house and the wicked people that are outside the house.

It's a separation between God's plan for mercy by sending these servants to Lot's family and those who will be judged.

It's a separation between the people that God will deliver and the people that God will destroy.

And so look at what Lot does.

He finds himself on the other side of the door.

And these people are not out for Lot's good, they are out for his destruction.

Remember, church has been like this ever since the beginning of the fall, hasn't it?

You remember what God said to Cain in Genesis 4?

He said, Sin is crouching at the door, its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.

Do you know, Christian, that you have a target on your back because you are a sinner, you have a target on your back.

Satan's desire is your destruction.

This has always been sin's aim is to destroy and bring death to those who pursue it.

And each of us, like Lot, find ourselves with sin and destruction pressing into the door of our heart.

The wood is cracking, the hinges are shaking.

The question is, where can we find deliverance?

Where can we find salvation?

Now, look what Lot does.

Lot tries to save himself.

Lot uses his own wisdom and his own means to save himself.

So look what he does.

In verse 7, he says, I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly.

Behold, I have two daughters who have not known any man.

Let me bring them out to you and do to them as you please.

Only do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof.

Lot offers up his daughters instead of the men.

I want you to notice that this is never commended in this text.

That was not the right thing for Lot to do.

And yet, Lot finds himself stuck between a rock and a hard place.

On the one hand, he has this biblical command to show hospitality to these servants who've come with a divine prerogative.

Remember that these are the servants of the Lord.

And then yet, on the other hand, he has this protective role as a father to protect his children.

And Lot feels that he has no way out.

And by offering up his daughter, Lot opts for a way that just cannot salvage any good.

Lot tries to use two wrongs to make a right.

But what that's showing us is that in our own attempts, we can do, never do anything to save ourselves that is anything but offensive.

Do you understand that?

That you cannot save yourself, and any attempt to save yourself becomes offensive to God.

This is why the prophet Isaiah says, this is gonna come up on the screen.

The prophet Isaiah says, in a second.

It's gonna come up on the screen.

He says, We've all become like one who is unclean, and our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.

We fade away like a leaf, and our iniquities like the wind take us away.

This is what Isaiah says.

Your righteous deeds are like dirty clothes, like dirty rags.

They're offensive to God.

Our sin is offensive to God, but to attempt to offer something else to ensure our salvation is just as offensive.

So there are some here who recognize that destruction is coming, who recognize the need for salvation, but instead of pleading with God to deliver them from the destruction, they're relying on their own works.

Instead, what do we need to do?

Notice what happens in Lot's life in verses 10 and 11.

In response to what Lot offers, the men only become all the more enraged.

And it says in verse 10, but the men reached out their hands, the servants reached out their hands and brought Lot into the house with them and shut the door.

And they struck with blindness the men who were at the entrance of the house, both small and great, so that they wore themselves out groping for the door.

What does Lot need?

Lot needs divine deliverance.

Lot needs not a human hand to save him from the situation.

Lot needs the hand of God to grab him by the back of the neck, by the scruff, and save him from his destruction.

And the same is true of us.

We will never be saved on our own merit.

Instead, we need a work of God.

This is what Paul says in Ephesians chapter 2.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

What does Paul say?

That you were dead in your sins and trespasses, not like kind of a life, not like you're doing okay.

What Paul says is you're dead.

But God, but God, but God being rich in mercy, chose to save you.

And Christian, if you are here having placed your faith in Christ, do you understand that God did the same for you that He did for Lot?

You were on the doorstep, destruction pressing into you, no way to escape yourself, and God took you with His gracious and merciful hand and redeemed you from your eternal condemnation and destruction.

He ripped you inside to His house of refuge and salvation.

He shut the door and He showed you His mercy so that now, like Lot, you wait inside the house for the day of ultimate redemption, where God will deliver you from the city that is about to be destroyed.

All by faith.

It's the work that God has done.

Some of us are here, we're trying to save ourselves, we're trying to escape the destruction.

And what you need to do in that moment is turn to God and say, God, I just can't do it.

It's gotta be you.

Let me ask you if you've experienced this type of salvation from your sin.

I want you to notice also that when God saves us, it's necessary that He takes the sin out of us.

And so you know the story that is the servants bring Lot and his believing family, those of them who did believe in the coming judgment.

Verse 23, he is bringing them out of Sodom and Gomorrah.

And in verse 24, the the Lord reigned, it says on Sodom and Gomorrah, sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven.

And he overthrew those cities and all the valley and all the inhabitants.

God brings destruction on the city.

Notice what happens to Lot's wife in verse 26.

But Lot's wife behind him looked back and she became a pillar of salt.

You know what happens?

See, Lot's wife believed that the judgment was coming, but she had never gotten Sodom out of her heart.

In her heart, she had a love and longing for the sins, sinfulness of Sodom and Gomorrah.

So she looks back, and you get the sense in the text that she's not just looking back to see what's happening, she's looking back with regret that she cannot live the life that she lived in Sodom.

And because of that, she too is judged.

And when God delivers you, this is the work that He does in your heart.

He not only saves you from the city of destruction, but he also changes your heart so that your heart, like Lot's, desires righteousness.

Your heart desires to truly be delivered from your sinfulness.

And so, church, can I ask you again, do you desire to be free from your sin?

Can I ask you in this last week, what proof could you show me that you are battling with sin?

Like we just sang, that you want to experience the victory that God has promised for you over your sin.

What evidence is there for me that you hate your sin and want it to be out of you, that you want to be just like Jesus Christ?

This is what it means to be saved is that Sodom and Gomorrah is taken out of your heart, and you have this desire to live for the Lord and to be like Jesus Christ.

See, when we walk with God, we find divine deliverance.

I want you to notice one last thing that when I walk with God, I find profound purpose.

This text ends with Lot and his two daughters being saved in the city of Zoar.

But look what happens in verse 31.

It says the firstborn said to the younger, Our father is old, and there is not a man on earth to come in to us after the manner of all the earth.

Let us come let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve offspring from our father.

So they made their father drink wine that night, and the firstborn went in and wit lay with her father.

He did not know when she lay down or when she arose.

The next day the firstborn said to the younger, Behold, I lay last night with my father, let us make him drink wine tonight also, then you go in and lie with him, that we may preserve offspring from our father.

So they made their father drink wine that night also, and the younger arose and lay with him, and he did not know when she lay down or when she arose.

You know, as a pastor, when you're preaching, it's nice to not end on the note of incest.

But here we are.

I asked Joel, you know, Joel always asked me what song should we sing after the sermon.

I said, I don't know, do you have any worship songs that deal with the theme of incest?

And he just couldn't, luckily, because of our theological desire to, or desire to sing theologically rich songs, we don't have any songs that deal with that.

And yet this text, we can agree, ends on a very odd note.

It ends with the incest of Lot's family.

How do we make sense of this?

Well, I think there's actually a really encouraging truth for us here.

See, out of this evil and wicked act, again, never commended in the scripture, out of this evil and wicked act, God brings about the promise that he had made to Abraham.

Do you see it?

Look what happens in verse 37.

It says, The firstborn bore a son and called his name Moab, and he is the father of the Moabites to this day, and the younger also bore a son and called his name Benami, and he is the father of the Ammonites to this day.

You know what God had promised to Abraham?

God had promised that through Abraham he would be a blessing to the nations, that he would be the father of many nations.

And now what we are seeing is the fulfillment of that promise.

God is using Abraham, despite the wickedness and weakness of his people, to fulfill his promise.

And this should be so encouraging to you, church.

I love what Calvin says.

He says, yet such are commonly the works of holy men.

Since nothing proceeds from them so excellent as to not be in some respect defective.

What Calvin is saying is, God is using your weak attempts to walk with him.

God is using your defective attempts to follow his will.

Of course, there is a better way for Lot to multiply his family than through incest.

And yet, God is using these acts to bring about his purpose.

And church, the encouragement for you is that God's desire is to use you in the weakness of your attempts to live for him and glorify him.

Think about how this applies to evangelism.

Do you know that God is willing to use you to save others in your life, even though you don't know all the answers that they might ask?

Isn't it true that the person that shared the gospel with you didn't know all the answers?

All they did was faithfully maybe share their testimony, or maybe it was your parents and they didn't know everything, but they just tried to faithfully teach you what they did know.

And you know what God did?

God took that weak offering, even though it wasn't perfect, and God used it for your salvation.

God is willing to do that in your life as well as you share the gospel.

You don't need to know all the answers.

What you need is El Shaddai, God Almighty, working working on your behalf, taking your weak attempts to satisfy his will, and using it for his purpose.

The amazing thing is that the Moabites happened to play a really important role in the life of Israel.

One day from the Moabites, a woman named Ruth would come.

And Ruth would be the mother of the most important king in the history of Israel.

Ruth would be the mother of King David.

And through the lineage of the Moabites would come our Savior and Lord Jesus Jesus Christ, who came in the line of David to be a king that is better than David.

And God is using this, even this wickedness, even these weak attempts to follow his will and multiply and fill the earth, God uses it for his glory.

And church, the same truth is true for you that when you walk with the Lord, when you live for him, when you work for him, God uses it for his purposes, to accomplish his will on earth.

Church, this is how good God is.

This is the goodness of God to show us how sweet it is to walk with him.

That when we walk with him, we find boundless blessing, we find intimate intercession, we find divine deliverance, and ultimately we found that we're used for a profound purpose.

Church, let's pray together.

Father, thank you that you desire to use us despite the fact that we are weak, despite the fact that we are unworthy, despite the fact that in many ways we're inadequate.

God, your desire is to use us in our weakness to bring glory to your name.

And God, I pray that it would be our desire, Lord, as those who believe in you and have placed their faith in you, Lord, it would be our desire to walk with you, knowing, Lord, that this is the path of greatest blessing in our life.

So, God, that you have shown us clearly the way that we should go.

That is to our greatest good.

So, God, we give you praise that you are a God that loves to reveal yourself, and you are a God that does not hide the way that we should live, but you are a God that shows us the way that we should commit our lives to you.

And so, God, we give you the praise, Lord.

Thank you that you are a good God.

We pray this all in the name of your Son.

Amen.