Genesis 19 — Man’s Divided Heart

This sermon is from Genesis chapter 19 and is entitled, Man's Divided Heart.

Genesis 19 · chapter mention

It was delivered to Ecclesia Churches on Sunday, August 23rd, 2026.

The most interesting villains in stories are the ones who experience some degree of conflict

within themselves.

There's something that's compelling about a character who has a twisted view of the world

that has been warped over time and experience.

And what's compelling about them is that we can almost always kind of identify with them,

to some degree at least.

Perhaps one of the most human experiences possible is this wrestle within ourselves over right

and wrong and pride versus humility and the flesh versus the spirit.

And ultimately for the Christian, it's a battle over allegiances.

Am I going to trust in the salvation of God and be obedient to his calling?

Or am I going to take the easy wide road that Jesus warns leads to destruction?

Am I going to continually give my heart to the Lord who has saved me?

Or am I going to live a life of some degree of compromise in which my heart is divided by lesser loves?

So far in Genesis, we've seen many people wrestle with this, starting with Adam and Eve.

Some of them have stood firm, and some of them have not, and none of them have stood perfectly

righteous, which has really pointed us ahead to our need for a better hope, one that we

will not find in ourselves.

We need someone who can do more than just wrestle with our sin, but can offer us a way

to be free of our slavery to it.

We need someone who isn't going to give us another version of the truth, but who will

give us the whole truth of God.

We need someone who will do more than just delay judgment, but who will take our punishment

of death and give us life instead.

Today, we're going to look at the character of Lot, and we're going to see the impact

of having this divided heart toward God.

Lot has spent the years leading up to this point moving away from Abraham and closer

to moral compromise.

He began following Abraham to this future promised land, and then he chose to settle

in the valley outside of it, and then moved into the city of Sodom, which we know from

the last chapter God is about to destroy.

And while God in his mercy saves Lot from earthly destruction, there is a price paid

for his divided heart. His witness is limited and he has no influence over his peers. His wife

is destroyed by her own love of a sinful life. His daughters are morally broken by their own

father's example and the culture around them. We're going to see a real life example of what

Jesus said playing out, that clinging to the world and your life will cause you to lose your life,

but choosing to trust and follow Jesus leads to eternal life with him.

I have been challenged by this passage in two specific ways that I would encourage you to

consider today. First, I think the Lord would have us consider the ways in which we are divided

in our own heart. And second, to see just how much better Jesus and his redemptive work in us

is. Let's begin by reading the first 14 verses of this narrative where we see that God's judgment

on this city is justified, but also that Lot is far from the righteous exception.

This is Genesis chapter 19, starting with verse 1 and going through verse 14.

Genesis 19 · chapter mention

The two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom.

When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them and bowed himself with his face to the earth and said,

My lords, please turn aside to your servant's house and spend the night and wash your feet.

Then you may rise up early and go on your way.

They said, No, we will spend the night in the town square.

But he pressed them strongly, so they turned aside to him and entered his house.

And he made them a feast and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.

But 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.

And they called to Lot, Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we may know them.

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

But they said, Stand back.

And they said, This fellow came to sojourn, and he has become the judge.

Now we will deal worse with you than with them.

Then they pressed hard against the man-lot and drew near to break the door down.

But the men 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.

Then the men said to Lot, Have you anyone else here?

Sons-in-law, sons, daughters, or anyone that you have in the city, bring them out of the place.

For we are about to destroy this place, because the outcry against its people has become great before the Lord.

and the Lord has sent us to destroy it. So Lot went out and said to his sons-in-law,

who were to marry his daughters, Up, get out of this place, for the Lord is about to destroy the

city. But he seemed to his sons-in-law to be jesting. So if anyone has doubts about the

condition of the population of Sodom, we now have our answer. I decided to have us read all of that

because it's important for us to see how people behave who have made themselves gods in their own

eyes. We'll get to a lot in a moment, but let's talk about a few distinctive things that describe

the character of these people that he's living with, the people of Sodom. First, it is not just

a few bad eggs. It says all of the people to the last man. From what we know about Canaanite

fertility cults, which is what would have been in this city, they were a people consumed with

their own pleasure, no matter who they had to objectify and abuse for the sake of it.

So here we'll tread carefully for younger ears, but make no mistake that when they say,

bring out these men so we can know them, they are not interested in getting to know them.

And if you're not following me here, go back to Genesis 4, verse 1 for the interpretive key,

Genesis 4:1

that Adam knew his wife Eve, and the result was children.

Second, they become very angry with Lot, who calls them out on some type of moral ground,

because for these people, what is moral is whatever they desire it to be.

And then finally, when they're struck blind, which should have been terrifying, they all

continue to try to find the door, meaning even when they are presented with a physical sign,

their sight taken from them temporarily, they still persist in their wickedness.

This is a culture that is so far gone, so spiritually blind, that they have completely

rejected anything good, and their only joy is in their perversion, and they hate to be

called out on it.

You had better affirm them in their sin or be prepared to face their wrath.

And that actually sounds uncomfortably familiar to some segments of American culture today.

These are the people that Lot has spent the past years growing close with.

So let's look at some key information about Lot.

First, the fact that Lot is sitting in the gate of Sodom is very significant.

And it's not a typo that says he was in the gate.

So the gate of an ancient walled city like Sodom was a room built within the walls that

effectively served as a town hall of sorts.

It was a meeting place for the leaders of the city.

It was a courtroom where civil cases would have been decided.

So it actually isn't strictly an insult when they say that Lot, quote, has become a judge

over us because his place presiding in the gate means that is indeed very similar to the

social position he had risen to.

I guess I always pictured Lot kind of sitting outside the front gate, almost like a front

porch, maybe smoking a pipe in the shade.

But instead, we find Lot in a place of authority, as an active kind of magistrate type of role

in some way, shape, or form.

And from that position, Lot is under no illusions about what will happen to these men if they

stay in the town square overnight.

So he invites them to his home.

But notice, that doesn't mean he is positioned against them, because he calls them my brothers

when these people come to his house.

The other cultural piece we have to understand here is the importance of what is called the

law of hospitality in ancient culture.

We saw this with Abraham.

He went to great lengths to receive these men and to serve them.

And Lot too goes to great lengths to protect these men under his roof because failing to

do so would be considered a mark on his reputation.

So part of what drives Lot to protect his guests from being mistreated is that he doesn't

to look bad as a host. So now that we see these people and we see Lot a little more clearly,

what's actually going on here? What has happened to Lot? This is the nephew of Abraham. And I think

it can mostly be explained by one word, and that is compromise. Lot has become a man with divided

allegiance with a small part of him holding onto the God of Abraham, who not so long ago, remember,

rescued him from being carried off in a war. But a large part of his heart is holding onto

things like his reputation and his position and his place among the culture of the people he lives

among. And the result is that he is deeply conflicted. And frankly, he is miserable. The

Peter 2 verses 7 and 8. He says he is godly enough to be miserable living in Sodom because he can't

really assimilate into that culture fully. Yet, he is also worldly enough that he is compromised and

has little sense of righteousness or moral clarity at this point. So on the one hand, he's pleading

with these men, he claims as brothers, to not do what is clearly a wicked thing with these men that

have come under his roof. But at the same time, he's providing them with an equally wicked option

by offering, unbelievably, his own daughters as a replacement. So let's just unpack this a little

bit, because I think it tells us something really important about what has happened to Lot.

Living among a people who prioritize their own pleasure, their own corrupt moral standards,

has slowly influenced the moral logic of Lot. He is so concerned about his reputation with the

people of Sodom that he decides it's better to choose what he considers the lesser of two evils

than it is to stand for righteousness. He is morally compromised. Now, thankfully,

the angels step in where Lot refused to step up, but the impacts of Lot's compromise

hit a little closer to home in these last few verses because it's not just generally the wicked

men of the city who refuse to listen to him. When he goes to warn his future sons-in-law,

they also disregard his warning about the coming judgment. Even more telling, they think he's joking.

The compromise of Lot has not led him to be respected by the men of Sodom, even those who

know him best. They see him as a kind of joke, someone to not take seriously, and therefore

he has no witness among them. Here's the hard truth of the matter. You cannot live a life of

compromise and still live a life of impact to the culture around you. If your life and your

priorities are largely indistinguishable from the culture that you live in, your witness to the

Jesus you claim to follow will be largely invisible to them. No matter what you say,

They are watching to see what you really believe.

So what are your choices and priorities and life communicating to the people around you

about your allegiance?

Christians must consistently choose a side and then live like you believe it because

the world around you may be spiritually blind without God's intervention, but they can smell

a hypocrite a mile away.

So we must live our faith with authenticity and pray for God to open the hearts and eyes

of the people who need him just as much as we do.

Preserving your witness to others is a powerful reason to live a life free of compromise.

But your own experience of life is actually another reason.

Jesus says in Matthew 6, 24, that you cannot serve two masters.

You'll love one and you'll hate the other.

Look at Lot.

He's miserable.

thanks to his divided heart. He's greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked,

is what Peter says. Yet, he also kind of wants their approval. He wants to live there.

Does that sound familiar? I think some of us are having a pretty miserable experience as Christians

because of our divided allegiances. The areas of compromise in our life, the sin that we want to

hold onto, like the cultural priorities that we want to maintain, they're actually making us

miserable. That reluctance to go becomes painfully obvious in the verses that follow. So let's read

some more. This is verses 15 through 28. As morning dawned, the angels urged Lot, saying,

up, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be swept away in the punishment of

the city. But he lingered. So the men seized him and his wife and his two daughters by the hand,

the Lord being merciful to him, and they brought him out and set him outside the city.

And as they brought them out, one said, Escape for your life. Do not look back or stop anywhere

in the valley. Escape to the hills, lest you be swept away. And Lot said to them, Oh no, my lords,

Behold, your servant has found favor in your sight, and you have shown me great kindness in saving my life.

But I cannot escape to the hills, lest the disaster overtake me and I die.

Behold, this city is near enough to flee to, and it is a little one.

Let me escape there.

Is it not a little one?

And my life will be saved.

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

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

Therefore, the name of the city was called Zor.

The sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zor.

Then the Lord rained 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 of the cities and what grew on the ground.

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

And Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord,

and he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the valley.

And he looked, and behold, the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace.

All throughout this account of their escape from Sodom, we see this divided allegiance.

lead to a kind of conditional surrender with really tragic effect.

So Lot and his family have to be mercifully drug out of the city

because they don't leave in the night like they've been told to.

They are then given specific instructions if they want to live.

And the instructions are, do not at any point stop and look back.

And do not stop short, but go all the way to the hills.

Even here, Lot pauses to plead for another option.

He points to this town that's called Zor later, which is still technically in the valley and

not up in the mountains, which again, God mercifully allows.

One thing that is very clear as this sulfur and fire rains down, bringing destruction of

these cities, it is a judgment that God is making and it is absolute.

Like not only the cities, but all the way down to the plants growing in this once lush

valley that Lot was so drawn to, everything is destroyed. Now, we don't know exactly where Sodom

and Gomorrah stood because the Bible doesn't give us GPS coordinates. But we know that the Israelites

who remember Moses is writing Genesis 2 would have been aware of this valley in the region

that was strangely devoid of life. And today we are still familiar with the region, actually.

Right in the middle of it is a body of water called the Dead Sea, which is interesting.

This picture of destruction was the judgment of God on these people, but it's also a picture of

the judgment that is to come. In scripture, we call this a paradigm. It's a kind of preview

of the judgment that is coming, in which everyone who stands opposed to God faces certain

destruction. And sadly, in this case, that also included Lot's wife.

were given enough detail to know that she is not walking into Zor with Lot,

but is some distance behind him.

And she does exactly what they were told not to do.

She stops short and she looks back.

And she becomes a pillar of salt,

a kind of tragic monument to a person who let their heart remain attached

to an old life that caused their death.

For Lot's wife, her heart remained in Sodom.

And in Luke 17, 32 and 33, Jesus gives us some insight into what was going on in her heart.

He says, remember Lot's wife. Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it,

but whoever loses his life will keep it. The lesson in this truly tragic passage is that

there is no middle position when it comes to surrendering to the Lord. You can't

unconditionally surrender your heart to God and leave your heart attached to worldly things.

If we are going to grasp the victory and the life that is ours in Jesus, we can't afford

to do so while only letting go of some things and not others. It's not a good way to live. It's not

the heart of God for us either. We may be saved by the grace of God and by the righteousness of

Christ, but holding on to these things that lead to death is not going to bring us to more life.

I feel like I can't move past this without addressing Christian husbands and also

those who want to be Christian husbands in the future. Men, it is so important that we do for

our wives what Paul says Christ has done for the church in Ephesians chapter 5. He says,

Ephesians 5 · chapter mention

Part of loving your wife well, maybe the most important part, is leading her to love the Lord,

encouraging her, going with her to the word of God often. I am very convicted by this particular

thing. Life gets busy. Work is hard. But we can't afford to neglect the spiritual leadership of our

wife and children, particularly in a world that would love to steal their heart.

Verse 29 serves as a kind of summary statement of everything that we just read. It says,

So it was that when God destroyed the cities of the valley, God remembered Abraham and sent Lot

out of the midst of the overthrow when he overthrew the cities in which Lot had lived.

The rest of Lot's story is really very sad. He never really recovers from this ordeal.

And he doesn't seem to really seek out God or God's people again. He becomes paranoid living

in the city that he requested to go to and ends up running to the mountains with his daughters

after all. His daughters come to the conclusion that their family line might be at an end and

they come up with a solution that is no less disturbing than Lot's earlier solution,

to use his daughters as protection for his guests in Sodom. In fact, when you consider the example

set for them by the culture of Sodom and by their own father, really, that it is acceptable to use

human beings for whatever benefits you the most, it's not less disturbing what they do, but it is

less surprising. And the time that we leave Lot, the only thing that he has produced, are the family

lines of the Moabites and the Ammonites, both of whom will come to be idol-worshipping nations

that are bitter adversaries of God's people.

And if we stop there, or if we think this chapter is only about Lot's story,

it would be a story without a lot of hope.

It would be a story of warning, but without hope.

But we know that God is able to take even the worst parts of human history

and write the story of redemption through it.

Romans 8.28 says,

And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good.

for those who are called according to his purpose.

So the question we get to ask with stories like these is,

where is the thread of redemption in the story of Lot?

I'm not going to leave you hanging.

We need to go forward a few centuries, though, to find where that thread comes out,

even past the time that Moses is writing this.

So in about 900 years, there will be a famine in this same land,

and an Israelite family moves to the land of the Moabites.

And two sons of the family marry Moabite women, and then tragically the father and both sons die,

leaving an Israelite widow with two Moabite daughter-in-laws.

One of them decides to stay in Moab and the other decides to come back to Israel.

And this Moabite daughter-in-law's name is Ruth.

Yes, that Ruth.

Ruth forsakes all of the Moabite customs and gods and chooses to follow the one true God

and becomes a part of Israel.

But it gets better.

Ruth ends up marrying again and becoming the mother of another child

and becomes the great-grandmother of a man named David,

who would be the second greatest king Israel ever has.

I say second greatest because the first greatest king is a descendant of David and his name is Jesus.

God is able to redeem the story of those who will turn to him.

Aren't you glad that Jesus came to rescue people like us, people who struggle with a divided heart?

Aren't you glad that Jesus saves us based on his righteous performance and not on our

half-hearted attempts, but that he also calls us away from that half-heartedness?

God didn't save Lot from earthly destruction because of Lot's faithfulness.

It was a gracious and merciful saving that he did not deserve or earn.

In the same way, God saves us not because of our perfect performance, but because Jesus

graciously took the punishment on our behalf.

plot is a cautionary tale of the risks that come from a divided heart. But it is also a story that

points us to our need for salvation in Jesus. And so the call on us today is really very simple.

Turn to Jesus. No matter where you are in your life, you can turn to Jesus and trust that he is

able to redeem your story. No matter how far you've tried to run or how you've been wounded

by others or even who you have wronged, there is forgiveness and redemption in the name

of Jesus for you and me.

And if you have walked with Jesus and you're now just realizing that your allegiance has

been divided, there's that conflict in you because you have given part of your love to

lesser things, turn to Jesus today.

Repent of those things, abandon them, and experience the kind of joy that can only come

from surrendering everything to Jesus.

Ekklesia is a church of house churches

gathering weekly in Council Bluffs, Iowa

and in homes throughout the week.

We are a Bible-centered church

focused on preaching from scripture

and making disciples of Jesus.

You can learn more about what we believe

and contact a pastor at ekklesiachurches.org.