Sin & Destruction

So today we are gonna have a really fun conversation about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Uh I'm so excited, guys.

And here I just want to put this out there.

A few people have mentioned to me that my timing on this series has been a little bit interesting, but I want to defend that for a second.

All right?

And this is completely revisionist history, I promise.

Um so look, we're going through the story of Abraham.

We started a story at the beginning of the year, a series rather called Getting to Know God.

We are trying to get to know God better all year long, and we're doing that through exploring the life of a man in the Bible named Abraham because he gets to know God.

God calls him to leave his home, to leave everything that he knows, to trust him, and he believes in God.

He is a believer, but he doesn't have a relationship with God.

He doesn't know very much about God.

And over the course of Abraham's life, he gets to know God.

He becomes intimate and close with God.

And so we're going through a story and we're not skipping the hard parts, and it just so happened that we got to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah on Mother's Day, which is a wonderful way to celebrate Mother's Day, is, you know, a good old story of biblical destruction.

So we launched this on Mother's Day, but instead of just trying to get through it, because we don't skip the hard stuff, and I like I said as we prayed, I believe that we grow as we deal with tension.

We're doing a little series within a series called Love and Judgment, and we are exploring how these concepts to us are so different.

How can you love and judge?

But God does both.

And to God, they're not opposites.

They go hand in hand because he loves perfectly and he judges perfectly.

And we have to come to a place in our faith where we have a trust in God that we can submit to and understand that He both loves and judges in the perfect way.

We usually get it wrong.

We we love as best we can, we judge as best we can, and oftentimes we wish we could go back and love and judge very differently.

In fact, we're encouraged to love like crazy in the Bible, like love liberally, but we're also encouraged to judge very sparsely because we get that part wrong a lot.

He does not.

So we're exploring this concept of love and judgment because in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, we see a God who loves people greatly.

In fact, if you were here last week, we talked about how shocking his mercy is.

And Abraham knows that he's about to destroy this city that is full of evil, and he's like, but God, what if there's a few good people in it?

What if there's 50?

What if there's 40?

What if there's ten?

And God's like, if there are ten righteous people, ten people that are just seeking to do what is good and right, I will spare the entire city.

That is a shocking amount of mercy.

But you know the story, or you can probably tell where it's going.

There's not ten.

The city gets destroyed.

And the reason we're talking about this now is because we just we're going through the story.

And I didn't look at a calendar when I planned it.

And so, you know, Mother's Day, we started at moms.

Just imagine if they had been raised by you, by the good moms here, they would have been so much better.

So we'll we'll use that as the tie-in.

Like that was the Mother's Day.

Just imagine if they had better moms, you know, this would have never happened.

And today is Pentecost Sunday.

For those of you that grew up in a more uh liturgical church, right?

I mean, I don't know how many of you grew up Catholic or almost Catholic.

If you're not Catholic, everything seems either Catholic or almost Catholic.

But if you grew up in one of those, you you would have been doing some big time Pentecost Sunday celebration.

Or if you grew up Pentecostal, I hope you would have done some Pentecost Sunday celebration.

If you have no idea what that means, it's all good.

I didn't either until a much later age.

So Pentecost is a Sunday that we celebrate the Holy Spirit coming down upon the believers after Jesus has been resurrected and he raises, like he goes back to heaven, the Holy Spirit comes down, and how does the Holy Spirit come down?

Tongues of fire.

Well, today's just a story about fire coming down, but in a different way.

And so it's kind of when you think about it, sort of perfect for Pentecost Sunday.

I don't know.

I'm just saying, we didn't plan it, but we could have.

All right, sorry.

Now, today's story is intense.

And really quick, for those of you that have kids with you in the room, you're they're free to stay, but we're just gonna read the Bible, and if you get mad at the content, it's in the Bible.

Like if you would have handed them the Bible and said, read it, they're gonna read this stuff.

So, if if though it's very important to you that your kids don't hear certain adult themes talked about, you might want to take them and check them into the kids' areas real quick, because we have awesome kids' areas.

But if not, I'm just letting you know this is the warning.

We good?

Okay.

So Sodom and Gomorrah, we're gonna see it get totally destroyed, completely and totally destroyed by a loving, kind, and merciful God.

It's a very interesting story.

And the reason that we're going through this and we're taking our time is because we're trying to learn about God.

And I think we learn a lot about anyone, really, when we see what it is that forces the nuclear option.

We have that phrase in our culture, the nuclear option.

There's got to be things in life that bring you to the nuclear option where you go, you know what, this is so serious, I am so over this that I'm I'm bringing out the big guns.

I don't know if you've ever had to use a nuclear option in your life.

I hinted at this a few weeks ago as we kind of brought this topic up, that a few months back I actually got really close to a nuclear option with my children.

Like I let them know that this is on the table and it freaked them out.

And my wife didn't agree with me, and I was like, look, you gotta trust me on this.

You gotta have me be the one with the nuclear option.

Like, just don't take that away from you or me, but like even you, you want to be able to have a husband where you can go if your father gets home.

Like, you need that to a certain degree.

So here let me let me explain the story because this was a pretty big one.

So we got a dog uh this last year.

I'm gonna show you guys a picture of my daughter Lily and this dog Cider.

That my beautiful dog, our beautiful daughter, right?

I meant to say my beautiful daughter and our dog, but they're both beautiful.

Let's go with it.

My daughter's way more beautiful than the dog, though, obviously.

So that is Lily, that is cider.

Cider belongs to all of us, but Lily is her favorite.

And if my sons were in the room, they would agree with you.

Lily's her favorite Lily is Cider's favorite by a mile.

So if Lily leaves the house, it is an emergency.

And Cider freaks out and he goes to the window and the doors and he cries and he whines.

And if I'm there, it doesn't matter.

He doesn't want me, he wants Lily.

If Lily goes, uh sometimes she babysits uh the neighbors who live behind us, and he will just watch her go out our backyard into their house.

He'll just sit there at the edge of the yard until she gets back.

Like he loves her so much.

We didn't have a dog for their entire lives.

This is a new experience for them.

They've been asking us for a dog for a very long time, and her answer was no.

No, we are we have four kids, our lives are crazy.

You guys, I don't think you're ready for a dog.

And they would promise us, oh, I promise, if you guys got a dog, we would take the dog on walks, we would train the dog, we'll feed the dog, we'll take care of the dog.

They they told us that over and over again, and we knew that that wasn't true.

But it got to the point where this Christmas we we decided I think they're old enough.

And frankly, we were praying about what to do for Christmas and talking, and my wife was like, I'm just not excited about Christmas this year.

And I was like, you know what would blow their minds is a dog, and she was mad about that suggestion, and then we prayed about it and we had peace.

And so we got the dog.

Now, I got permission to show the video that I'm about to show you from my daughter, and full disclosure, I had to pay her$50 to show you this video.

Okay?

It's it's eight seconds long.

We captured the moment that they saw cider, they had no idea this was coming, this was Christmas for them.

We had them close their eyes, we counted down from five, they opened their eyes, and in this video I got all my kids' reactions, but Lily's was not what I expected.

And it is both the most amazing and interesting thing I've ever experienced in life, or one of them.

And so I've just focused on her for this video because I want you to understand the level of love that this girl has for this dog, and maybe this is why this dog loves her so much.

He knew from the moment he first met her that he was special in her eyes.

Okay, so here we go.

Take a look.

Three, two, one.

No, he crying.

Alright.

Uh she continues to cry for a long time.

So I cut it right there because she said, just don't let it go on.

I mean, she sobbed.

Right?

So here's the progression of her of her expressions.

I just want to show this, I want to milk this because I'm paying$50 for it, okay?

So that's the moment she opens her eyes.

This next one is the moment she sees that it's a dog.

This next one is the moment that the emotion starts to hit her.

And then we got this.

We got ugly cry for a very long time.

She cries, she's like, I love him so much.

Is it a boy?

I love him so much.

She's just crying, crying, crying.

And because I love my daughter, uh, we'll finish with a picture like this so she feels uh this isn't she an elegant, lovely girl?

Okay, great.

So there you go.

There's there's there's Lily.

I didn't want the ugly cry picture to be the last picture in your minds of my daughter.

So, Lily, that's for you.

Okay.

50 bucks.

I mean, the amount of love that this girl and all my kids had for this dog right away was was incredible.

But they also proved to be liars.

Because 36 hours later, they were over it.

They were like, hey, mom, dad, he needs to go outside.

Uh he he's barking, you know, he's he's wiggling.

We're like, everything that they just brought him to us, and we had told them, guys, this is your dog, and we're gonna obviously help and be responsible, but we want you guys to take care of this dog.

So two months later, Super Bowl Sunday comes to a head.

I was already super frustrated at how they had not followed through on their promises, and we were setting up very reasonable, very realistic, like a rotation.

There's four of them, right?

It's not that hard between four of them to take the dog out.

We decided to go to some friend's house.

Um, Melissa and Jake Thomas, good friends of ours, invited us over for Super Bowl Sunday, and we went over and hung out.

And I remember at one point at halftime, my wife was like, Do you think we should go home?

And I said, No, this the kids have it.

They've got the dog, we're good.

We get home, they did not have it.

Um Cider had urinated on our bed three times.

Three different spots.

Because what we discovered is that our bed is tall enough that he can't jump off it.

He can now, but back then he couldn't.

And they had just decided, well, if we put him on mom and dad's bed, he'll stay there because he can't get off, and then we can go do whatever we want to do.

And when I tell you that I lost my mind, I need you to understand that that is not an understatement.

I understand now the wrath of God.

And what happened was Megan, Megan, I mean, she was like heartbroken.

She was so upset because, I mean, it was just a lot of work.

Our sheets and this, she has this quilt that's like a she loves this quilt.

It's not something you throw in the washing machine.

When there were four of them, so she just had to leave.

She's like, I have to go.

So she's in tears and she just has to leave.

And then the kids were left with me.

And I said, Everybody on the couch.

And I thought about it for a minute and I prayed, but like in that moment where sometimes you you pray, and it's like you and the Lord, you feel like you're in sync, and this was not mercy, this was serious.

And I sat the kids down, and I and I didn't I didn't manipulate, I didn't threaten in some like say goodbye to the dog.

I didn't do that, say goodbye to cider guys, I didn't do anything like that.

But I said, you know what, guys?

I'm seriously considering taking the dog back.

And their eyes got just as big as when they first saw him.

And I said, because you know, he's only a couple months old.

If we found another family that's ready to take care of him, he'll be fine.

He'll be fine.

But but but you guys have made us promises, and your mom, you know, she she relented, honestly.

Like Megan was not convinced.

She was convinced she was the one that was gonna have to do everything, and that's proven true.

And you guys, we we've asked you over and over again, and you refuse to do it, you refuse to do it.

I'm serious, I am seriously considering tonight.

I'm gonna pray about it tonight, but I am seriously considering maybe we need to find another home for the dog.

And they lost it.

And I was glad.

Like they they all went to their rooms, they were crying.

My oldest looked at me like he wanted to fight me, you know, like I was doing some, you know, we had an intense moment, and then Megan got home with that atmosphere in the house, and she was like, she went to all the kids, and they all gave, they all gave her their version of the story.

And she came to me and she's like, What did you do?

And I was like, I scared them.

And she's like, Yeah, they're freaked out.

I was like, Good.

I'm totally comfortable with them all losing a night's sleep, freaked out about this, because they have to understand the seriousness of this.

Now, was I actually gonna get rid of the dog?

Maybe.

But no, no, I mean no.

And I didn't tell them it's happening.

I just let them know, guys, I am this is on the table.

This is on this has been such an egregious refusal to do what we ask you to do, and now here it is, and and mom just wanted to have one night out and look, this is on the table.

Sometimes we get to a place where, whether I was right or wrong, as human beings, we get to a place where there's a nuclear option and it's on the table.

That is true of God.

God deals with things.

And he is good, and he is loving, and he is kind, and we've addressed that.

We talked about it last week, and that's where why at the very beginning of this series we discussed the idea that love and judgment to us they seem like opposites to God.

He is He is God, He is holy, He is just, He is right.

His judgment is perfect.

But sometimes it seems extreme.

And with that in mind, we're gonna read the story of Sodom and Ora.

And just so you guys know, today's message is likely to be a two-parter.

Um, maybe we'll get through all of this, but it's likely to be a two-parter.

Can't wait to see what attendance looks like next week.

All right.

Genesis 19, 1 through 29.

That evening, the two angels came to the entrance of the city of Sodom.

Lot was sitting there.

This is uh Abraham's nephew.

We've we've haven't seen him in a while in the story.

And when he saw them, he stood up to meet them, and then he welcomed them and bowed with his face to the ground.

My lords, he said, Come to my home, wash your feet, be my guests for the night.

You may then get up early in the morning and be on your way again.

Oh no, they replied.

But Lot insisted, so at last they went home with him.

Lot prepared a feast for them, complete with fresh bread, made without yeast, and they ate.

But before they retired for the night, all the men of Sodom, young and old, came from all over the city and surrounded the house.

They shouted to Lot, Where are the men who came to spend the night with you?

Bring them out here so we can have sex with them.

So Lot stepped outside to talk to them, shutting the door behind him.

Please, my brothers, he begged, don't do such a wicked thing.

Look, I have two virgin daughters, let me bring them out to you.

You can do with them as you wish.

By the way, Lot is terrible.

Just because the Bible records something does not mean it condones it.

Lot is not a hero in the story, and Lot's decision here is terrible.

Lot makes terrible decisions every time we see him.

So, please, he says, though, leave these men alone, for they're my guests and under my protection.

Stand back, they shouted.

This fellow came to town as an outsider, now he's acting like our judge.

We'll treat you far worse than those other men.

And they lunged toward Lot to break down the door, but the two angels reached out, pulled Lot in the house, and bolted the door.

Then they blinded all the men, young and old, who were at the door of the house.

So they gave up trying to get inside.

Meanwhile, the angels questioned Lot, Do you have any other relatives here in the city?

They asked.

Get them out of this place, your sons-in-law, sons, daughters, anyone else, for we're about to destroy the city completely.

The outcry against this place is so great it has reached the Lord, and the Lord has sent us to destroy it.

So Lot rushed out to tell his daughter's fiance, Quick, get out of the city, the Lord is about to destroy it, but the young men thought he was joking.

At dawn the next morning the angels became insistent.

Hurry, they said to Lot, take your wife, your two daughters who are here, get out right now, or you will be swept away in the destruction of the city.

And when Lot still hesitated, the angel seized his hand and the hands of his wife and two daughters and rushed them safely outside the city, for the Lord was merciful.

And when they were safely out of the city, one of the angels ordered, Run for your lives, and don't look back or stop anywhere in the valley.

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

Oh no more oh no, my Lord, Lot begged.

You've been so gracious to me, you've saved my life.

You've shown such great kindness, but I cannot go to the mountains.

Disaster would catch up to me there, and I would soon die.

See, there's a small village nearby.

Please let me go there instead.

Don't you see how small it is?

Then my wife, or then my life will be saved.

All right, the angel said, I'll grant your request.

I'll not destroy the little village.

But hurry, escape to it, for I can do nothing until you arrive there.

This explains why that village was known as Zoar, which means little place.

Lot reached the village just as the sun was rising over the horizon.

Then the Lord rained down fire and burning sulfur from the sky on Sodom and Gomorrah.

He utterly destroyed them, along with the other cities and villages of the plain, wiping out all the people and every bit of vegetation.

But Lot's wife looked back as she was falling behind him, as she turned into a pillar of salt.

Abraham got up early that morning and hurried out to the place where he had stood in the Lord's presence.

He looked out across the plain toward Sodom and Gomorrah and watched as columns of smoke rose from the cities like smoke from a furnace.

But God had listened to Abraham's request and kept Lot safe, removing him from the disaster that engulfed the cities on the plain.

It's really intense.

It's interesting, quick aside, this is actually one of the biblical stories that we have the most archaeological evidence for.

I shared this either last week or the week before, that when we read the Bible, we recognize that we're reading history.

And it's amazing how many times in history there's been a discovery of something that is in the Bible, and the skeptics of the world will have this excitement because they're like, finally, the story is going to be proven wrong.

And actually, what ends up happening time and time again is that what is discovered archaeologically backs up the story of the Bible.

It's amazing.

And so there is a historical site in the Jordan Valley, the same area that Sodom and Gomorrah was, and it's called Tal El Hamam.

I think we have the word up on the screen for you.

It's Tal El Hamam.

This is an ancient site discovered, it was excavated, and they found during this excavation an event happened in this place in the Jordan Valley during the Bronze Age, same time period as this story, okay, long, long time ago, close to 4,000 years ago.

And here's what they found in the research.

Amazing.

They discovered a 1.5 to 3 foot thick layer of heavy ash mixed with mud bricks and human bones.

They found evidence of extreme heat.

The excavators found shocked quartz, melted pottery, and diamond-like carbon, indicating temperatures moment uh momentarily spiked above 2,000 degrees Celsius.

The blast vaporized the water from the nearby Dead Sea, spreading a blanket of salt and sulfates across the valley, and this sudden influx of sulfur-heavy, salty soil would have made the land unlivable for centuries.

There is there's actually a couple of other sites that have similar findings in the Jordan Valley, and again, this affects that area.

So this is this is something that we have a tremendous amount of archaeological evidence for.

In fact, the scientific explanation of this, apart from a miracle, is that they believe the only thing that could have caused that would have been like if a large meteor, if something like that, hit that that city.

I mean, it's viewed as some type of cosmic event, would have had to have happened to create that, and that's what we have the evidence for.

And look, I mean, if a meteor hits somewhere today, chances are it's in the ocean or it's in an uninhabited place because most of the world is uninhabited.

But in that time period, like pretty much the the the odds of a meteor hitting a city 4,000 years ago, I mean, if it I'm just saying if a meteor hit a city 4,000 years ago, somebody threw it.

Okay, that's all I'm trying to say.

Because the odds are are they tiny.

This happened.

Now, the fact that it happened is one thing, should it have happened.

That's another.

This is where we wrestle with God.

And I've said this before, I love the idea of wrestling with God.

I don't think we should hesitate from wrestling with God.

In fact, the people of Israel, their name means wrestle with God.

God changes the name of a man in the Bible named Jacob to Israel.

That becomes the namesake of his people.

The word Israel means to wrestle with God.

It doesn't mean to follow God, to love God, to honor God, to serve God, to obey God.

It means to wrestle with him.

God is okay with us wrestling with him.

And look, if you're here today and you're at church for the very first time, I'm I'm sorry.

But uh, or maybe you're visiting uh wherever you you decide to be, and it's important to be at church, it's so important to be in God's presence with other people, believing and worshiping him.

That's so vital for your faith.

Be at a church that allows you to wrestle.

Don't don't allow yourself to come under the teachings of people who just try to gloss over everything and make it all out like it's all easy and it's all soft and cuddly, and there's no no, it's sometimes the God stuff is hard.

It's hard, but we don't grow if we don't wrestle.

If there's not tension, there's not growth.

So we've got to wrestle with this stuff.

Should this have happened?

Was this right?

God's destruction of an entire city and multiple villages, the death and destruction.

Because it's easy to look at this and go, I think God maybe overreacted.

And I've said this before.

I feel that way often when I read the Bible, like, ooh, that's that's a little much.

But something that God has has reminded me and shown me is is it possible that I'm wrong?

That's always a good question to ask.

You know, God could be wrong or I could be wrong.

Which is more likely.

Is it possible that maybe I look at these stories and I assume that God is overreacting.

To sin, but what's really true is that I underestimate sin and how serious it can be.

And so as we explore this either today or today and next week, it just depends on how fast we get through this.

And I'm just giving myself, it's okay, I don't ever do this, but I'm giving myself permission for this to be a two-parter.

And which means if it is a two-parter, I haven't planned some cool cliffhanger ending, so it's probably gonna end with us going like, well, see you next week.

But just know that in advance, okay?

Because there's a lot here, and I want to unpack it in a different kind of way instead of it just, it's not a neat and tidy message.

I'm just being honest with you.

Okay, so I've got a little little some uh a whiteboard with some charts and some words on it, and we're gonna have that rolled out here.

Who is rolling that out?

Is that uh what's up, Ryan?

Everybody, let's hear it from Ryan.

Thanks, man.

All right, perfect.

Let's go right here.

There you go, guys.

This is my actual handwriting, so just be in awe.

Um this is what this is what a left-handed person that's being left-handed's hard because I can't really write it as we go because it just smudges.

So I'm just gonna have it here.

We're gonna we're gonna explore this.

I want to look at four questions over either today or probably next week, too.

What is sin?

How serious is it?

What is God's response, and what about my sin?

Because remember, this is all under the guise of us learning more about God.

What does this teach us about God?

How does this affect our lives?

But we've got to understand these concepts first.

What is sin?

The answer is sin is a that's a bunch of things.

The actual Greek term for sin is a Greek word that just means to miss the mark.

And so it's like if you are uh playing darts and you don't hit the bullseye.

There you go.

That's what it generally means just to miss the mark.

And some people try their best and still miss the mark, and some people don't even try at all.

Some people basically go, that's the target, I'll throw it over there, right?

But at the end of the day, sin is to miss the mark, and the mark is what?

The mark is God's perfection, God's holy standard.

We were created in the image of God.

Our original purpose was not to be people who live a lifespan and die, struggling our entire lives, working, toiling, failing.

That was not our purpose.

Our purpose was to be made in the image of God and to reign with God here on this earth.

Genesis chapter 1, he says, Let us make man in our image to be like us, you know, Father, Son, and Spirit, to be like us.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

And then he says, Let's have them reign over the earth.

I don't know if it feels like you're reigning all the time.

I don't know if that's how you would describe your year, your week.

And people are like, How you doing?

I'll just, you know, reigning.

Just exercising my dominion over this thing called life.

Or does it feel like life reigns over us and we are at the mercy of its circumstances?

That is called the curse.

That is the fall, that is the result of sin.

Because we missed the mark.

In fact, I was talking to my son Judah about this yesterday.

We were having breakfast together, and it was just the two of us, and the story of Adam and Eve came up, and he was like, Can you believe them?

And I was like, Yeah, but you think we would have done better?

He's like, Yeah?

I was like, Oh, really?

And this is exactly what happened.

We were eating a giant blueberry pancake, and I was like, Well, Judah, how often do you do the opposite of what I say?

And his eyes got big, and then he went, But you're not God.

And I said, touche, touche.

But Romans chapter 3 puts it pretty bluntly.

Romans 3 · chapter mention

For everyone has sinned.

We all would have done the same thing.

We all fall short of God's glorious standard, and yet God in his grace freely makes us right in his sight.

He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty of our sins, for God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin.

People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood.

Sin is missing the mark, but sin is also described in the Bible in a way that makes it seem like it's an entity, that it's alive.

In fact, in Genesis, the first time sin is ever mentioned is God speaking to Cain, who's one of the children of Adam and Eve, and Cain is going to kill his brother Abel, and God warns Cain before that happens.

He says, Be careful, sin is crouching at the door.

Sin is, it's personified in this moment.

Sin is described as like a force, and it is after you.

It seeks to make you its slave, but you must master it, you must subdue it.

And Cain fails.

Sin is it's an action.

It's when we it's when we miss the mark, when we do what is not right.

Sometimes that is unintentional.

In fact, the Bible has kind of a word for that: trespass.

Sometimes you'll see in scripture sins and trespasses.

Trespasses are like those oops moments, and you're like, oops, I didn't mean to.

That was whew.

My bad.

Then there's the sin part, which is like, yeah, I totally meant to do that.

That was on purpose, I knew it was wrong, and I did it anyway.

And we've all done that.

And sometimes we do that very brazenly.

Sometimes we we you know we do mental gymnastics to convince ourselves that, well, technically, if you think about it the right way, it's not really bad for me in this moment.

But we sin.

How many of us sin?

All of us, everybody sins.

And it's it's a concept we don't like, but there's a concept called original sin in the Bible, that we are born in sin.

We are born sinners.

And it is so hard to look at a beautiful young child and go, sinner.

But we are from birth.

Not that little kids are accountable for their sin because they don't know what they're doing, but eventually they do.

And those of you who are parents, you know that there was a moment, there was a moment where your kid's bad behavior went from being cute, you know, cute little posts on Facebook, like, oh, can you believe they did this today, little little stinker, you know?

To where you're like, we're selling the dog, okay?

Like there's a moment where that happens.

You know, it's it's by the way, dog's doing great.

So I just want to say, love him, glad he's part of our family.

Um there's a moment though where it's not innocent anymore, and it's inevitable that everybody sins.

The question is, how how big of a deal is it?

Like how serious is sin?

Well, scripture puts it very bluntly again.

For the wages of sin is death.

Ooh.

That's not good.

The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.

I love how every time we see these mentions of judgment and sin and what it results in, we are reminded over and over again, but, but God has grace, God has mercy.

And his mercy far outweighs his judgment for sure.

But sin is really, really serious.

Romans chapter 1, kind of the middle of it through the beginning of Romans chapter 2, is often used as kind of a companion piece to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, because this is the Apostle Paul explaining in detail just how serious sin actually is.

Romans 1 · chapter mention Romans 2 · chapter mention

And keep in mind as we read this, Romans is one of the books of the Bible that we get the most amazing descriptions of God's grace.

I mean, Romans is where we're told that we're no longer slaves to sin, that we've been freed from that.

Romans is where we're told that through believing in Jesus there is no condemnation, no condemnation.

We are more than conquerors now because of what Jesus has done.

So Romans is not some downer of a letter.

And yet, Paul begins this amazing treatise on the grace of God, which is much of what Romans is, by describing the wrath of God and the necessary judgment for sin.

And this is what it says.

Romans chapter 1, verse 16 is where I'm going to start.

Romans 1:16

Paul says, I'm not ashamed of this good news about Christ.

It is the power of God at work, saving everyone who believes, the Jew first and also the Gentile.

This good news tells us how to make us how God makes us right in his sight.

This is accomplished from start to finish by faith.

As the scriptures say, it is through faith that a righteous person has life.

But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful wicked people who suppress the truth by their wickedness.

They know the truth about God because he's made it obvious to them.

For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky.

Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature.

So they have no excuse for not knowing God.

Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn't worship him as God or even give him thanks.

And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like.

As a result, their minds became dark and confused, claiming to be wise, claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools.

And instead of worshiping the glorious, ever-living God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people, and birds and animals and reptiles.

So God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired.

As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other's bodies.

They traded the truth about God for a lie.

So they worshiped and served the things of God instead of the Creator Himself, who's worthy of eternal praise.

Amen.

That is why God abandoned them to their shameful desires.

Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex and instead indulged in sex with each other.

And the men, instead of having normal sexual relations with women, burned with lust for each other.

Men did shameful things with other men, and as a result of this sin, they suffered within themselves the penalty they deserved.

Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do things that should not have been done.

Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior, gossip.

They're backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud, boastful.

They invent new ways of sinning and they disobey their parents.

They refuse to understand, break their promises, are heartless, have no mercy.

They know God's justice requires that those who do these things deserve to die, yet they do them anyway.

Worse yet, they encourage others to do them too.

Now, let's park here for a second.

What I just read made you mad.

I didn't write it.

So let's just, we can address difficult topics, elephants in the room.

One of the things that makes this story, the story of Sodom and Morah and this companion piece in Romans exceptionally challenging is the presence of the description of homosexuality.

And we did a series, I'll say this on the front end of this, we did a series a few years ago, three weeks, called The Biblical Sexual Ethic, where we explored this topic and other topics related to what God views as healthy human sexuality.

We went through it in detail, and I don't want to do that every single time that we bring this up because that would just be weird.

So you can go listen to that if you want to, but I do want to address a couple of things.

When it comes to sin, we have to ask ourselves a question, and maybe it's another question I should have put up on the board.

Who gets to determine what sin is?

Does God have a say?

Does God have a say?

When my oldest was starting to ask tough questions about this kind of stuff, every parent's dream, right?

When your kids start asking those questions, we went for a drive.

And while we were out driving, I explained to him, and I this is the best analogy I could think of, and hopefully it helped.

But I said, hey, someone made these roads.

Somebody made these roads, son, that we're driving on right now, and they made them for a purpose, and that purpose is for us to drive on them.

They didn't make the roads and then say no cars.

They made these roads to be driven on, but they also created some rules.

And we see speed limits and we see places where we're told to stop.

And we see signs that tell us not to turn down a certain way.

We could look at those signs and be angry at the people who made those signs and say, How dare they tell me how to drive?

I'll drive the way I want to.

Put it in reverse, pedal to the metal, right?

Or we could we could follow the rules as they were set for us, because whoever made these roads, maybe they knew what they were doing.

And they're not trying to keep us from enjoying the drive, they're trying to make sure we drive in the way that it's intended.

We have to have that sort of a view of God.

And we'll explain why we often don't.

There's there's this is all connected.

But we happen to live in a time, and this is just the reality of it, we live in a time and in a culture where something that the Bible describes as sin, homosexual behavior, and there's a difference between behavior and attraction, and we can get into all that.

We did in the biblical sexual ethic, I encourage you to go find that online, listen to it.

Um we we really went in deep on all this stuff.

But but that behavior, those actions are described, Old Testament, New Testament, whatever context you look at in the Bible, as sin, as missing the mark, not what God wants.

What's hard is that as a person who has those desires, you can want that really, really badly.

And then the question gets really tough.

Like, well, what happens when what I want conflicts with what God wants?

And in that particular area of life, I think those challenge, those are those desires are even more challenging, I'll admit that.

But this is something that scripture describes as sin.

Now, the church has at times elevated that sin beyond all others and made it sort of the pet sin to throw judgment at.

There have been other sins that have been approved by culture.

In the 1980s, greed basically got the rubber stamp, and it was like, yeah, be materialistic.

And we don't tend to be as harsh on greed as we are on certain other sins, and homosexuality has been a sin that for many years the church kind of elevated the most, and that's not true.

No sin is greater than another.

But but just because our culture decides, yeah, this is fine, that that doesn't mean we as believers have to go along with that.

But here's where it gets really important.

I I wrote four words here at the bottom, and just again, impeccable left-handed handwriting.

Um what do we do with that?

What do we do when the Bible's very clear on something, and yet we live in a culture that has a very different take, and when it becomes even more complicated is when we love people who live like that, or who say that that is who they are.

And we can have a whole different conversation about that.

But what do we do?

And so I'll just share this with you real quick because I think this is important.

We have these four words, and these are a big guide for us here at his hands, and it's love, accept, agree, endorse.

Love, accept, agree, endorse.

We are called to love everyone.

Period, full stop, end of story.

I have I have dear friends who are gay.

People that I would say I love that person, genuinely.

And the question becomes, well, I love them, do I accept them?

And you can accept people and love people that believe differently than you, that don't share your values and ideas.

You can.

Jesus did all the time.

Like, he was kind of famous for that, made the Pharisees really mad.

Here's where it gets tough.

The cultural pressure is to agree and endorse.

In fact, we're often told in culture if you love, you must accept, agree, and endorse.

And anything short of endorsement is viewed as hate.

And I challenge that.

I I call foul on that.

Because if you can only love people that you agree with, I don't think that's really love.

It is super easy to love people who agree who agree with you, right?

That's not hard.

How challenging is it to love someone that you disagree with?

I mean, you can love them, obviously, but I'm saying, isn't it a higher version of love to love someone and accept them but not agree?

And I'm just saying, as a church, what we have to do in the nation that we live in, I'm not just saying with this issue, but with any issue, is we have to be people who can love and accept when we don't agree and endorse, but we cannot become people who are pressured into agreeing and endorsing with what God does not agree with or God does not endorse just because our culture does.

It's a tough line to walk.

But we should be, as believers, people who, you know what, I don't endorse that because God doesn't.

And I don't agree with it because it doesn't line up with Scripture, but I can accept you and I can love you better than anyone else you will ever meet on the face of this earth because I have the love of Jesus in my heart, and you will never receive love more than you'll receive it from me through the Holy Spirit, even if I don't agree with you and endorse you.

But I love you and I accept you.

And that's what we're called to do.

And you can do that.

And it's but it's hard.

It is hard.

And that's something I'll just be honest, that the couple that started our church, Steve and Susan, were incredible at.

Loving people like I had never seen people be loved before, but still being willing to say, Oh, yeah, I don't agree with that, but I love you.

And that's how we're called to live.

Okay, I hope that helps, and if not, my bad.

Um, Romans 1 explains to us the seriousness of sin in a really interesting way, and this will probably be where we put the pin in our day after we explore this, and then we'll get to God's response and what about my sin next week.

Because Romans chapter 1 paints a very vivid picture for us on how serious sin actually is, because it is not just something that stays contained to your life.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

Like when you sin and you mess up, you can own that and you can you can repent and move on.

Repentance is where you turn from that.

But if if not, if you don't own your sin and you don't repent from your sin, sinned has a tendency to grow.

And guys, we've all experienced that, right?

Like at some point in time, there was a moment in life where you sinned because you wanted to, because something was enticing.

But then eventually, maybe you found yourself sinning because you have to.

You're compelled to.

Like it has a hold on you.

See, sin is a really bad master because it always wants more.

Sin is never satisfied.

There's never a moment where sin says, I'm good.

That's enough.

It wants more and it consumes and it spreads.

And what Romans chapter 1 actually explains is on a cultural level, when you're reading Romans 1, it is talking about sin on like a national scale, like a cultural scale.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

It's describing entire cultures that have existed before.

And Paul was writing during the Roman Empire, okay?

We live in America today, there's definitely parallels.

But I just want to say this on the front end as we explore this, that it wasn't just like Paul and the Christians who were saying, hey, things are out of control.

Non-Christian Roman philosophers during the time of Paul wrote ad nauseum about the moral degradation of their society.

Okay, so for example, there's a man named Seneca, and this is a bust of what Seneca looked like.

Anytime I look up ancient uh you know Roman uh philosophers or or people in history, I always like to look up what they they look like.

So that's Seneca.

He was 30 years old when they made that bust.

I'm just joking.

I don't know.

But you know how like you look at pictures of your grandparents and you're like, wow, you guys were you looked old at 20, you know, life was harder.

No, Seneca, crazy thing about Seneca, really interesting life.

He was born in 4 BC, which was basically when Jesus was born, and he died in 65 AD, which is basically when the city of Jerusalem was destroyed.

So he lived in a very monumental period of history.

And you know, it's tough.

When you look at these guys, it's hard to remember that they were real.

And so I just like to remember that Seneca was a man and he was a thinker, and so maybe we can we can help.

Well, here, put this up.

This might help you think, yeah.

You know, he was just like one of us.

Maybe he was a little bit more casual.

He could have been, you know, like, there we go.

That's just Seneca, the youth pastor, going, you know, guys, I've been thinking.

And Seneca, sorry.

I was like, there's gotta be something funny in there, because it's a pretty serious topic.

Seneca said this of the time in which he lived, the same time that Paul wrote the book of Romans, same era.

He said that we live in an age stricken with the agitation of a soul no longer master of itself.

Think about that.

We live in an age stricken with the agitation of a soul no longer master of itself, because sin had taken hold.

And Romans 1 walked us through this interesting journey of what happens.

The first thing that happens is the rejection of truth.

The rejection of truth.

It says that as sin takes hold, Romans 1 describes the first step in that was that God is rejected, that truth is rejected, even obvious truth.

In fact, this is a challenging concept, but the Bible says the fool says in his heart, there is no God.

And there's actually five different words in the Old Testament that mean fool, and that is the most intense version of that word.

The fool says in his heart, there is no God.

It's a rejection of truth.

He's like, look, I mean, look at the sky.

The heavens declare the glory of God, right?

Look at the sky, look at the world, look at this world that we live in, and like acknowledge that there's a God to, especially for the ancient people, recognize that the people that God created, they all knew him, they all knew of him, but yet still, sin, when it takes a hold, you reject truth.

So that's the first thing that happens.

And that definitely happened in Sodom and Gomorrah, and it happened in Rome, and it happens today.

Number two is the elevation of self.

This is really interesting.

It says Romans 1 21 and 23.

I'm gonna read a slightly different translation.

Says, yes, they knew God, but they wouldn't worship him as God or even give him thanks.

They began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like.

And as a result, their minds became dark and confused.

It goes on to say that they started worshiping idols and basically making up false images.

They decided, after rejecting the truth, the elevation of self, they decided this is what God is.

I think God is this.

I'm going to worship this version of God.

And that is, that is, that is Eve in the garden, by the way.

It looked good to her.

It was pleasing to her eye, and so she decided in that moment, Adam as well.

I'll decide what is good.

I'll decide what is right.

When sin takes hold, we reject the truth, but then we actually elevate ourselves to the position of God, and now we get to decide what is right and wrong.

We get to decide what is permissible and what is not.

And it's disastrous.

And guys, we live in a time and in a culture that is obsessed with self.

And I've talked about this at nauseum in the past, but uh there's this worldview called secular humanism, and it's the worldview that became predominant in the 1950s, really, and a little bit before that.

And if you grew up in school, how many of you were kids in school in the 80s and 90s?

Like you watched Teenage Meet and Ninja Turtles when you got home from school, and yeah, yeah, okay.

My people.

Um we were the first generation raised, literally bathed in the ideas of secular humanism.

That's why we saw posters on the remember the posters in school with like an eagle sort?

And there was a word, it was like encouraging.

It was always stuff like believe in yourself, express yourself, be true to yourself.

The self becomes the center of life.

It's not about believe in God, know him, follow him, serve him, submit to him, worship him.

It's you.

Believe in you, celebrate you, express you.

And when you put yourself at the center of the world, God is displaced.

It's literally idol worship.

It's just you become the idol.

In fact, it's been written that the essence of sin is to put self in the place of God.

The essence of sin is to put self in the place of God.

And what follows from that is moral collapse.

Moral collapse.

We see this in Romans chapter 1.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

Verses 28 through 32, and we'll kind of cover these two right here.

Since they thought it was foolish to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do things that should never have been done.

Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior, gossip.

They're backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud, boastful.

They invent new ways of sinning and they disobey their parents.

They refuse to understand, break their break their promises, are heartless, have no mercy.

They know God's justice requires that those who do these things deserve to die, yet they do them anyway.

Worse yet, they encourage others to do them too.

I love how in that list it's like they disobey their parents.

That seems like a lower level one.

But to not honor the generations before us, right?

To have disdain for the generations before us.

That's that's essentially what that is.

There's a moral collapse.

When you reject the truth and you elevate yourself, there's a moral collapse.

And the moral collapse becomes so devastating, so devastating that what is evil is actually viewed as good.

And now sin is no longer uh something that people struggle with, it's something they celebrate.

And when a society gets to the point where sin is celebrated, where it is viewed as good, it's a scary thing.

It truly is a scary thing.

And we've got five minutes left and we'll wrap up.

Might as well just like throw all the buzz hot button topics out.

Um I was watching a clip years ago.

In fact, I was talking to a really good friend of mine a few weeks ago.

We had lunch, and this came up, and I mentioned it, and he was like, I remember the same moment, and it hit me the same way.

It was really interesting, but it's a tough one.

This this uh deals with abortion, okay?

And so, full disclosure, um, I have some very dear friends, close friends, who have had abortions, and there is love, and there is grace, and there is mercy.

In fact, we have an awesome woman here at our church who leads a support group for women who have had abortions and come to a place where they wish they had not, which is very common, and how do you heal from that?

And it's amazing.

And so I there's no, this is not judgment, um, not at all.

But I I've talked about this topic before, I'm just setting this up a little bit.

Um, as a believer, forget about politics.

People try to make things political, but and and they're politicized, but as a believer, I I personally strongly do not believe that there is any way to reconcile abortion with our faith.

And it's not because I'm a conservative right-wing white Christian male at all.

It's not politics.

The world tries to, that's all distraction.

Here's why.

I love Jesus.

Anyone else love Jesus?

Okay.

At one time, my Jesus, my Savior, my King, my God, was an unborn child in the womb of a teenage, unwed mother.

And he rescued all of us.

The unborn in Scripture are given destinies.

God speaks very often of children in the womb and who they will become.

And so I'm not, I'm not even approaching this from a scientific level or a philosophical level.

I'm saying as a Jesus follower, and if you're not a Jesus follower, you can have a different opinion.

You don't have to share my views.

That's one of the things I think the church does wrong a lot, is it tries to, we try to superimpose the values of scripture on people who don't believe.

Like Paul's writing to believers when he writes Romans, right?

But as a believer, I believe in Jesus, and my savior was in the womb, and those two things do not reconcile in my faith, no matter how difficult and challenging a circumstance may be.

And there can be love and compassion and grace and understanding, but still, again, these words.

And so years ago, I'm watching this clip, and it was an award show.

And I'm just saying this, this is not some type of alarmist, America is doomed, we're the next Sodom and Gomorrah.

Um, but it's a recognition of how of how things can get to a certain point.

There's an award show where this actress, and I won't name her name, no reason to, but this actress won a big award for a movie.

And you know, you get up on the stage and they give you the golden little golden trophy, a little golden man, which is an interesting mental image if you know the Bible, like a person holding a golden statue of a person.

That's just, you know, I'm saying.

And she holds it up and she says, I'm so grateful to have won this award.

And it, you know, at the time, and still currently, this issue was one of the most politicized and you know, buzzworthy issues to talk about.

And she she used the kind of political language of the day where she said, I would never have been able to do this, to win this, if I had not exercised my right to choose.

And the whole room stood up and cheered and clapped.

And I was like, it was interesting for me.

I mean, I didn't like freak out, get on Facebook, whatever.

Didn't rant.

Um I I actually have a family member who uh abortion affected, like I'll just put it this way, abortion hits really close to home for me.

So it's not something, again, I'm not filled with anger if someone, if that's their story, if that's your story, I'm not judging you.

Goodness.

But it was just the the mental image of I'm holding this golden statue, and all it took, right?

I never would have had this if I hadn't done that.

And everyone cheered and stood up, and I was like, oh man, I feel like I've read about this before.

You know?

So this feels like a fun place to end.

Told you.

Oops.

I got a bunch of people that are, no, I'm never coming back there.

Uh usually we have baptisms.

We had a baptism scheduled, but they had to postpone, so I don't even have like a baptism to save it today.

I can't even go like, look at this person.

I mean, I can't do that.

This is this is it, guys.

We're gonna take Lord's Supper and pray.

But uh here's what I will say as we wrap up.

Oh, guys.

We'll take this together.

Let me explain why this should matter to all of us very, very much.

And I'm gonna use an analogy that I've used before in the past, but it's it's been a while, so I think it's okay to use it again.

The reason this is important is because if we can't acknowledge the seriousness of sin, if we can't see how evil sin is, and how corrupting it is, and how it just takes everything over, and how it begins with the a lie, a rejection of truth, and then pretty soon the self is elevated, and before you know it, there's a moral collapse and a celebration of sin, and we'll keep exploring this with Sodom and Gomorrah next week, because at Sodom and Gomorrah, you see where it got to, the point where it is just outright sin and violence and evil and destruction was the answer.

If we can't acknowledge the seriousness of sin, then we cannot appreciate the seriousness of this.

We take this meal every week.

And it represents the sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross to save us from what?

From sin.

Whose sin?

Our sin.

To diminish the seriousness of sin is to diminish the power of this.

I used to think of it in these terms.

If you imagine a scenario where you're walking down a street, okay, and it's recently rained, and all of a sudden someone comes and shoves you out of the way, just boom, checks you, pushes you out of the way.

Your response to that happening to you is going to depend on how serious the situation was that necessitated that action.

If there was a puddle that you were about to step in, and someone came and violently shoved you out of the way, you would be angry.

Like, why did you do that?

You'd get in a fight, maybe.

Well, you were gonna step in a puddle.

Well, then just say, hey, whoa.

Puddle.

Now, maybe it's more than that, maybe it's more serious.

Maybe it, maybe it was like, I don't know if this ever actually happens in the world, but it does in cartoons.

There's a manhole that's just open.

And you were about to fall in the manhole.

And if someone came and violently shoved you out of the way, you'd be mad and upset for a moment, but it's like there's a manhole, you're about to step in it.

You're like, oh wow, well, hey, thank you.

That would have, that would have hurt.

I probably would have had to go to the ER.

Thank you.

I'm not that mad, but you know, a warning next time, maybe, I don't know.

But if it was like a semi-truck heading toward you, and that person shoved you out of the way and took the hit for you, you wouldn't be angry, you would be awestruck and dumbfounded, you wouldn't have words to speak, you would fill, your mind would race, your eyes would fill with tears, and you would recognize that someone saved you.

And they saved you from something serious and deadly, and you had no hope other than what they did.

Our culture would like us to believe that sin is at worst a puddle in the street.

There's a minimization of sin.

And when sin is minimized, grace is minimized.

But sin is really serious, and the story of Sodom Gomorrah teaches us that.

Next week we'll look at how God responds.

Hopefully, bring that home.

Sin is serious, but grace is serious.

This sacrifice of Jesus, this is not just some nice little thing that God did for you years ago to help you know that you were loved.

Absolutely, it is that.

This is a God who loves you so much that He met the seriousness of sin with the seriousness of his grace.

And it cost him his life, it cost him everything.

I think that's why it's important for us to study stories like Sodom and Gomorrah and to be reminded of yes, we live in grace and he has forgiven us, and we're in a new era, it's the this is the Old Testament, obviously, but we live in Romans 1 was written in the New Testament.

We live under the grace of God and the mercy of God, and we're not made to live, this is not meant to fill you with fear.

Now, if there's something in your spirit that's like, whoa, something in my life isn't right, yeah, get it right.

Repent.

But you're forgiven, you're loved because of the seriousness of this moment.

But let's not pretend like this is just some nice little sweet gesture.

No, this is Jesus, holy, righteous, pure, rescuing us from something that is serious.

The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life.

And as we take this this morning, if you've never received that gift, if you have never given your life to Jesus, you are at the mercy of sin.

And I'm being honest with you.

You're at the mercy of sin, and sin is not merciful.

It does not forgive, sin destroys.

It always destroys, destroys everything.

That's why if you give your life to it, your life ends up wrecked.

If you haven't given your life to Jesus, you're at the mercy of sin.

But if you've given your life to him, if you give your life to him, if you surrender your life to him, you're at the mercy of God's grace.

And it is never ending, it is all consuming, it is complete.