Lot's Rescue

Today's reading is from Genesis chapter 19, verses twelve through twenty-nine.

Genesis 19 · chapter mention

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

Sons-in-law, sons, daughters, or any one 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.

As morning dawned, the angels urged Lot, saying, Take up 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 favour 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 till you arrive there.

Therefore the name of the city was called Zoar.

The sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zoar, then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah, sulphur and fire from the Lord out of heaven, and he overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, 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.

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.

This was the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

That was a long reading, wasn't it?

It's a lot of standing.

This is the time of our in our text, in our march through Genesis, where Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed.

And so there'll be a lot to look into today with uh Lot's rescue and Sodom being destroyed.

But first, uh I want to start with a couple of announcements.

Next week, we will be having baby dedications to kick off the service.

So be sure to show up for that.

Uh that's always a joyful time.

And then the week after that, we will be having baptisms.

That's May 16th.

You can sign up for that in our app.

Um if you don't have our app, it's really useful.

Uh you can just go to any app store of your choice uh and type in Redemption Church Denver.

Type in the whole thing, including Denver, because there's like a thousand redemption churches, and we all use the same church app company.

So, like, type the whole thing in.

Then you can download it and sign up for these things.

Um, if you have questions, we're going to be baptizing infants for the first time on that Sunday.

And so this is kind of a scandalous thing, uh, but it doesn't have to be.

So uh in order to sort of de-scandalize this, we've got some books up here, Why Do We Baptize Infants, to describe that bit of the process.

So if you'd like, you can come up and grab one at the end of the service.

Also, we can talk and answer any questions about that.

Uh Wednesday, May 12th is an evangelism workshop in the evening.

So if you are interested in learning about evangelism and how to use your home or your table to introduce people to the gospel and to share what the gospel means, uh, this is going to be a great workshop.

Uh it's going to be taught by Jacob Carr, and I think it's going to be really useful and beneficial.

Uh, I'm going to be attending it because I feel like I need help in that area.

Um it's easy to evangelize when like everybody shows up, but at steady time and you're the only one allowed to talk.

But I've learned that most environments aren't like that, uh, which is complicated.

Um finally, uh, welcome night.

Uh my wife and I are hosting a welcome night.

There's so many folks that have come during COVID, and we only know the top half of your face, and we haven't gotten to uh know you as well as we would like during this past year.

So we're having a welcome night in our home uh that's Wednesday, nope, Friday, uh May 14th.

So if you're new, basically think like since COVID, so like the past year, um, come on over.

We're gonna have apps and drinks and hang out.

Um what one more thing, uh, there's so many announcements, but want to let you know, I mentioned this book last week, uh uh called Unwanted by Jay Stringer.

The tagline is how sexual brokenness reveals our way to healing.

Uh, this book is so helpful.

So if you want to come up and just like scan it with your Amazon app and buy it, I recommend that.

Uh but I wanted to, since I referenced it last week, I wanted to show you what it was like.

It's like a book.

You've seen them before.

Also, this summer, uh, June 2nd, we're gonna have our first meeting, but we're gonna be doing a book club, and we're gonna be reading this book called The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self.

So, look, it's pretty geeky.

Okay, so uh I was talking to my sister, and she's kind of into this stuff like I am, and she was like, This is pretty geeky.

And I was like, Yeah, it is.

Is it too geeky?

And she was like, No, it's not too geeky.

But we'll find out together.

Um I think that uh I I had a professor who who said this all the time.

He he used to say, We're most influenced by the philosophy that we don't know.

And what that means is the things that we just take for granted and assume this is just the way the world is, those are actually the most influential uh ideas in our lives.

And this is a great history of our own culture that kind of peels back the curtain, and you'll discover over and over again, oh, that's why I think this way.

And the Bible actually presents things pretty differently.

So it's a really helpful book for understanding yourself.

And if you found our culture confusing lately, this will be very helpful.

Okay.

Now I only have six more announcements.

All right, let's pray and we'll get into the text for today.

Father, thank you for bringing us together.

Thank you for uh a beautiful day and your care for us and for our church.

Lord, I pray that you would work in our hearts, that in your word we would see uh the severity of your salvation, but also just the directness of your grace towards us.

Lord, help us to see that.

Give us eyes to see uh your grace towards us this morning as we see it demonstrated to Lot.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is kind of like a mini flood story.

Remember when we went through, and it was actually uh right when COVID first started last March, and we were preaching, I was preaching through the flood, uh, which seemed ironic then.

And what we see in uh Sodom and Gomorrah is this mini sort of picture of the flood, where we see something has become so decrepit that that wickedness has abounded so much that God moves in and destroys what has become so wicked.

And the parallels are actually really deep.

We see we see the wickedness of the whole world in the flood story, and we see the wickedness of the city of Sodom in the Sodom story, in Lot's story.

There's also some strange parallels.

Uh, do you remember in, it was actually my first sermon in this building, which was an odd choice, uh, where we preached on the Nephilim.

Do you remember that?

It was weird.

Um, and the that where it describes the angels, the sons of God, coming down and reproducing with the daughters of men.

Strange story, but it preempts the flood where there's this relationship between these angelic beings and these humans.

But notice we see the same dynamic in the Sodom story, where just last week we saw the angels, uh we see the men of Sodom seeking to know the angels uh who are coming to destroy Sodom.

So there's this there's this kind of like human stepping outside their given boundaries, sort of dynamic to both stories.

Also, we see in both stories uh a key man and his family are rescued.

So, of course, Noah and his sons and his sons' wives are rescued.

And here, Lot and his family are also rescued, although not his whole family.

But the offer of rescue is made to both the key man and his family.

We see that all else is destroyed other than this key person and their family.

And then the epilogue story to both Noah and Lot is drunkenness, where Noah becomes drunk and then a family member uncovers his nakedness.

And it's the same with the story of Lot, that Lot becomes drunk and then his daughters uncover his own nakedness.

There's a lot of symbolism to both of those things that we won't get into now, but the point is to see that God is showing us a picture of judgment over and over again in Scripture.

And when we begin to see the patterns in the way that God shows himself in Scripture, then God is saying, look, I'm teaching you how I operate in the world.

I'm showing you what it is like when judgment is coming.

I am a God who brings real judgment.

That there are things that become so wicked that I will destroy them completely.

We'll see this similar pattern happen with the nation of Israel itself, who is uh drawn through the waters of Egypt, and we see the same sort of picture of like Noah and like Sodom, but at a national level.

So when we learn these patterns, we learn that the way God, we learn the way that God operates in the world.

And Jesus actually links these two things together.

Just in case you think this is just like my idea.

Uh, it was Jesus' idea, ever heard of him?

Luke 17, 27 to 28, he says, they were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage until the day when Noah entered at the ark.

And the flood came and destroyed them all.

Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot, they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building.

What's Jesus' point?

What does it feel like when God's judgment is imminent?

It feels like this.

It feels normal, it feels ordinary.

And that's the warning that Jesus gives.

It's the warning that Jesus derives from this pattern in Scripture and the way that God operates.

He's saying judgment is always just around the corner.

Now, what that means is that we live in a world of meaning.

To have judgment just around the corner is the same as saying there is an ideal.

There is a true way that the world should be, a way that things should be operating.

And when we acknowledge that ideal, then we recognize that there is some real judgment of the ways that we're acting and operating and the dispositions of our hearts.

Now, this is something that we understand in a pretty normal way.

Like if you think that you are training for a marathon, then there's this ideal that you've set on your horizon.

And that ideal is 26.2 miles.

It's the bumper sticker, right?

Then everyone will know.

And if you uh for so from now on, now that you've set that ideal of getting to put the bumper sticker on your car off into the future, now all of a sudden, every run that you go on is being judged by that ideal.

Every time that you that you skip a training day and you just sit on your couch instead, then all of a sudden that act is being judged by that ideal.

And then when the day of the marathon shows up, the judgment becomes actual.

You're either able to complete it or you're not able to complete it.

And so what we see is that judgment is the same as meaning.

It's saying that the wickedness that is in the world actually matters.

There is something like justice that will be realized.

And so God is teaching us to understand the world this way.

This isn't just random happenstance.

It's not just whatever you can get away with is good.

It's not just might is right or something like that, but there is real judgment that is coming.

And the ideal that we see we're all being compared to and judged by is God Himself.

What could be a higher ideal than the source of all goodness, the source of all life?

So the second we have that ideal, the second we introduce God into the equation, we introduce judgment into the equation.

And once we introduce judgment into the equation, we also introduce meaning.

No meaning, no judgment, excuse me, then you don't get to have meaning in your life.

Do you see that connection?

All your runs just become random runs without the marathon judging it.

All of our actions just become sort of meaningless little blips on some space-time continuum without the ideal of God in the equation.

God is the true judge.

He's the true ideal.

But the problem with our lives is we deny God as the true ideal, we take him out of the place of true judgment, and instead we put all sorts of other things into that place.

And we center our lives not around how we're living in accord with the way that God has called us to, but we center our lives around some other ideal.

You know, it could be like an American dream ideal.

What house am I living in?

And how am I, how does that reflect on me as a person?

What promotion am I chasing?

And then how does that reflect on my humanity?

And that becomes the ideal that judges you.

Uh, is this person interested in me, or is that person not returning my phone calls?

These become these small ideals that we make ultimate, and in doing so, we misunderstand the truth of the world.

So, in a society like ours, which is a society like Sodom's in this regard, when we sponge away God as the judge, and we no longer have a judge that is out there, at the same time, we remove any sense of real meaning in our lives, any hope of true justice.

So today we're going to see how in Sodom judgment looks like a joke.

And then we're going to see how seductive the alternative ideal of Sodom really is.

But then we're going to see the severity of God's grace towards us and rescuing us and uh and grabbing us by the hand, literally, to show us the truth that He is the ideal.

Sound good?

Here we go.

Sounds good to me, so Genesis 19, 12 through 13.

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

Sons-in-law, sons, daughters, or anyone 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, set the scene of where we were just after last week.

Uh the angels come to visit uh Sodom, and they come and they rescue Lot from this angry mob, and they bring him inside, and now the angels share directly with him what their plan is.

Like, look, here's the deal.

We're here to destroy Sodom, we'll rescue you, but the outcry against this city has become too great, and now God will destroy it.

The way that this is phrased in Hebrew, it's it's described as like God is compelled to destroy the city now.

This is how we need to understand God's judgment.

It's like a fact of the world that when you disregard it, it always shows up.

God's judgment is like gravity, and our sins are like uh weights on a weak bridge.

Eventually you heap enough up, and gravity will win every time.

It is a reality of the world that cannot be ignored.

And this reality of God's judgment is now making itself real in Sodom.

You can imagine a city that becomes so overwhelmed by lies that it's it's becomes unable to function as a real city anymore.

And in that same way, we see God's judgment showing itself towards Sodom.

And then what's offered to Lot is the same thing that's uh the same principle that we see in Noah and in Abraham.

And that's God operates his offer of salvation at the level of the family.

This means that to God, the family is not a social construct, but it's actually a mechanism that he uses to send his offer of salvation out into the world.

And so we see with Noah that he's given the opportunity to bring in his own sons and his sons' wives, and they all come into the ark.

And with Abraham, the offer is to him and to his offspring.

And then here in Lot, it's the same level that God operates at, this level of the family.

And he says, they the angels give Lot this opportunity, says, Do you have anyone else here?

And then they just list things like, I don't know, sons-in-law, sons, daughters, anyone you have in the city, bring them out of this place.

And this is this is what happens when Lot tries to gather up his people.

In verse 14, it says, 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 this is the middle of the night, and Lot runs to his sons-in-law, likely wakes them up.

That's why he shouts, Up! And he says, Get out of the city, because God is about to destroy this place, and his sons-in-law laugh at him.

Like he's just telling a joke.

Now, this describes two things for us.

The first thing is this reveals how Lot is perceived.

This doesn't speak well of Lot's own character.

You know, I have a father-in-law, and you you the you don't uh uh this is just not how you treat your father-in-law, especially when you're trying to marry his daughter, right?

They haven't married his daughters yet, and already they're like, forget this guy.

That's the impression of Lot's character.

But this also shows us what the city of Sodom is like.

This idea of judgment is so foreign to the city of Sodom that there's just no category for it.

So they laugh at it.

We talked a bit about laughter when we were talking about uh Sarah, you may remember.

And we talked about how laughter establishes a boundary of what is acceptable to understand or what's just foolish to understand.

And so Sodom is establishing this boundary, saying judgment is laughable.

And you know what they're saying?

There is no such thing as meaning in the world.

If you are arguing for a life that is actually meaningful, that matters, where there's real and legitimate.

Consequences to our actions, that the world is not just made up of whatever we can get away with, then you're actually talking in these just naive terms.

You know, you're you're you've been taken in by some sort of a fairy tale.

But don't you see that maps really well onto a modern materialist view of existence?

That there is no real meaning of our lives.

We come just from chance and we go just to the dust.

And there is no real justice beyond what we can execute against each other.

And that is the vision of life in Sodom.

That means there's no real morality, there's just tactics, there's no real law and meaning in the world.

That idea is just laughable.

Instead, all that exists is our own internal psychological states that we try and make as positive as possible, and our own satisfaction of our own desires.

That's the only judgment that exists in the world.

So Lot is laughed out of Sodom.

He's unable to convince any others to follow him, except for his wife and his daughters who were already with him.

And so this is what the angels do as Lot begins to bargain with them.

In verse 16, it says, But he lingered.

So Lot is lingering in Sodom, knowing that the destruction is coming.

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.

Okay, so Lot is told by the angels, I'm going to destroy the city, go gather up who you can.

He's unsuccessful.

And so he's just kind of like hanging around the city.

And they're like, come on, Lot, it's time.

We gotta go.

We're here to destroy this place, remember?

And Lot is lingering.

So what do the men do?

Is they seize him, his wife, and his two daughters, by the hand.

And then what's what qualifies it?

Why are they doing that?

Why are they grabbing Lot and his daughters by the hand?

The Lord is being merciful to him.

Okay, now let's use this to interpret our lives.

What have you had ripped from your grasp?

What relationship have you not been able to recover?

What financial situation have you just seen go away, or what dream have you seen slip out of your reach?

Perhaps that's the Lord's mercy.

Perhaps you've been grabbed by the wrists and taken away from something that you thought you would be able to achieve, because the Lord was being merciful to you.

Because the Lord was saying, this thing that you've set up as an ideal by which you judge all of your life through, it is nothing compared to God as the ideal.

And in order to reorient that, I'm going to grab you by the hand and I'm going to pull you out of the city of Sodom.

And you'll look back in this thing that is frustrating and feels awful to you right now, you will look back and say, that was the Lord's mercy.

That was the Lord's mercy.

In a world with no judgment, no real judgment, in a world that only matters in terms of the satisfaction of our internal psychological states, then those losses are just catastrophic.

But in a world where God is the judge and he's merciful towards us, then there's meaning in those losses, to the point where we can actually look back at them in all of their catastrophe and call them his mercy towards us.

So they seize Lot, grab him by the wrist.

We see that there is a severity to the rescue of God.

In verse 17, it says, And as they brought them out, one said, one of the angels, Escape for your life.

Do not look back or stop anywhere in the valley.

Escape to the hills, lest you be swept away.

Do you see the severity of the rescue of God?

You must leave it all.

You must leave all of Sodom behind.

You cannot bring any of it with you.

You cannot even look back at it while you flee.

This is the severity of God's rescue.

And what is at stake?

It's your very life.

The angel says, escape for your life.

But you cannot take any of Sodom with you.

In verse 20, this is Lot's response.

He says, Well, I'll I skipped a couple of verses, so I'll explain them.

Lot says, Look, I can't leave.

I can't escape to the hills where you're telling me to escape to.

In fact, if I do that, I could die if I do that, which is actually just completely absurd.

There's nothing in the text that shows us if he doesn't do precisely what the angels do, uh, that there's any other option of living.

But I'll continue to verse 20 now.

He says, Behold, the 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.

Doesn't he sound so absurd?

Let me look, I know you want me to flee to the hills, like to where my uncle Abraham is, to where the land of promise is.

I know you've said, look, flee out of this valley and up into the hills.

Do you see how Scripture uses these images over and over again of the valley into the hills?

Even though I walk through the mountain of the shadow of death?

No, that's not the picture, right?

No, I walk through the valley.

We see Eden on a mountaintop and we see Sodom down in the valley.

And then the angels call, call Lot, go escape to the hills.

And he says, No, look, there's this little city over here.

Uh, it's it's little, right?

We can all agree it's little.

And could you let me escape to that city?

It's just a little bit of Sodom.

It's not like it's not like all of Sodom, the way Sodom is.

Yeah, Sodom's crazy.

But this little city, just like a little bit of Sodom, I can keep that with me, right?

And how does he phrase it?

Is it not a little one?

And my life will be saved.

The angel had said, Escape for your life, don't look back.

But what does this show us that Lot thinks his life really consists in?

To Lot, Sodom, and the success of Sodom is his life.

And if for him to turn his whole back on that is to say, is to say, no, I surely will die if I'm not able to hold on to this little bit of Sodom.

You see how the ideals that we set up in our lives, it's like to say, like, you know what, I'm gonna uh pass on that promotion or something for uh the uh sake of my family.

You know, it won't actually be be better to be working in that way.

Those ideals that we set up in our life to abandon them is like embracing death.

He thinks that his life is Sodom.

His life is totally intertwined.

Remember the life that he's leaving, where we found Lot when we first saw him in Sodom.

Lot was sitting at the gate, which means that he was involved in the trade of the city, that he uh even had a place of authority within the city of Sodom.

Remember, when the mob is knocking at his door, you know what that means he had?

A door.

His uncle Abraham, when the angels come and visit him, the the thing that's between the angels and Sarah when she's laughing is a tent flap.

That's because Abraham in his obedience to the Lord only has a tent at this point.

But in Sodom, he had a real home that he had built permanent in its place.

And so he says, Let me just keep a little bit of Sodom for myself.

Now, here is what Lot understands rescue to be.

Lot sees rescue as escaping judgment, but remaining unchanged in your heart.

To Lot, the rescue is I won't be judged for living this way, and I won't have to be changed from living this way.

God will rescue me, but in no way will He become my God, will He become my ideal.

I'll be able to keep my ideals for myself.

Do you see that?

It's cheap grace.

It's a grace that doesn't cost God anything, and it doesn't cost Lot anything.

In Matthew 16, verse 25, Jesus says, Whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

Matthew 16:25

Do you see that this is the dynamic that's at play?

Saying, those things that you have set up as your life, as the definition of your life, if you let go of those, let those die, and instead allow God to be the one who defines what your life is, then you will find true life.

Then you will find true freedom.

We see the love of the world is really strong.

Chapter 19, 24 and 25.

Then the Lord reigned.

Oh, I should, I should say, the angels say, Fine, go flee to that city.

And they let him go to that small city.

The grace of the Lord towards Lot just shines forth in Lot's constant bargaining.

The grace of the Lord is incredible in this passage.

Verses 24 to 25, it says, 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.

We see this same thing as as with the flood, although not by water, but by fire, and there's this destruction of even what grows on the ground.

It's like this total unwinding of the sixth day of creation.

But Lot is rescued from it.

But the losses that he tried to mitigate, they follow him out of the city.

In verse 26, it says, But Lot's wife behind him looked back and she became a pillar of salt.

Now, I I don't really grasp, to be honest, precisely what this means that she became a pillar of salt.

But I think it's something like the sulfur of destruction that took place on Sodom is manifest in her own heart and in her own being as she tries to keep a piece of Sodom with her.

That when she tries to escape the judgment but remain unchanged in her heart, to hold on to this little glimmer of Sodom, that she becomes Sodom.

The only way of escape is to leave it all behind, is to die and then be resurrection, be resurrected.

This is the call of the gospel.

And here is actually the only place of distinction that we see for Lot.

This is the only time where Lot looks like, okay, he actually did a good thing.

And what's the good thing that Lot did?

This is like the only when we're looking at the text, it's like the only positive thing that we can say about Lot this whole time.

All he did was not look back.

The whole of the goodness of Lot can be summed up in he kept his eyes on the ones who were rescuing him.

That is the whole goodness of Lot.

That's the difference between him and his wife.

One tried to hold on to Sodom in her heart.

One barely, don't you just get the sense?

Like we see him lingering too.

One just barely turns and keeps his eyes focused on the ones that are rescuing him.

And by that, just sliver of faith, just like a mustard seed, to borrow an analogy, of faith, he is rescued.

In his book, The Great Divorce, C.S.

Lewis writes this parable that's kind of like Dante's divine comedy, The Inferno, you know, where you get this tour in heaven and hell.

And in this fable, uh, heaven and hell uh kind of meet in this one place.

And so there's these conversations between those who are who are in heaven and those who remain in hell.

And uh there's this great interaction between this one ghost who is in heaven and the angel who kind of operates as your Virgil, your tour guide throughout uh throughout the story.

And uh the this one ghost shows up and is just frail, you know, this ghostly type of person.

And he has a lizard on his shoulder.

And the lizard is constantly whispering into the ghost's ear.

And it's annoying and it's frustrating to hear this constant whisper of the lizard into the ghost's ear.

And so the angel says, I can make that lizard be quiet for you.

And the ghost says, Oh, please, of course, this is torment.

Would you please make this lizard be be quiet for me?

The angel says, Okay, great, I'll kill it.

And you'll never hear it speak again.

And the ghost recoils.

Says, Well, you never said anything about killing it.

I mean, we don't, we don't need to kill this lizard.

And then as the conversation continues, we realize that the lizard is, is the man's lust.

This little, little bit of lust that he holds in his heart.

Now, it could be any sin, of course.

This little bit of greed, this little place in my life where I won't let God speak into.

And they go back and forth, and and the man starts saying, like, look, I'm actually not feeling very well, and I think I'd need to go to the doctor before you killed the lizard.

And then we'd come back and we can make a plan for another day.

The angel says, It's now or never.

I can kill the lizard now, or I'll you'll live with it forever.

He says, Well, okay, I don't know if this will work.

Anyway, they go back and forth and back and forth.

Finally, the man is convinced by the angel to kill the lizard, and listen, listen to the line that allows the man to part with this lizard on his shoulder.

He says, the ghost says, Go on, can't you?

Get it over, do what you like, bellowed the ghost, but ended whimpering.

God help me, God help me.

And then the angel takes the lizard, wrings it, kills it in his hands, and it falls to the earth.

Now I just want to look at that.

What a hero of the faith.

Go on, just get it over with.

Kill it, I'll look away, do it, you've got my permission, but just just I'll look away, but just go.

The angel receives that little mustard seed of faith, this just nothing speck of faith, and kills the lizard.

And the lizard falls to the earth and starts writhing after its death.

And then it grows up, and Lewis describes this really well, and it grows up and it becomes this beautiful horse.

And the ghost becomes this solid man, no longer a ghost.

And he mounts up onto the horse.

Notice just the position, right?

The lizard was high on the man, and now the man is high on the horse.

And they ride off, shooting up a hill like a shooting star in glory.

Now remember, the lizard had to die.

But when the lizard died, and it was no longer the master over the man, like our sin is the master over us, like our little sodoms that we want to carry around in our hearts.

God is saying, lay those down before me.

Lay those plans down before me, and I will make you the master of them.

When your heart is oriented rightly, then this lust that drove you will now be a love that you share in the world and you direct where it would go.

That is the transformation of the gospel.

And we see that same thing take place with Lot.

Lot is by this little sliver of faith, just looking, he becomes glorious in a way.

This is what's read of his or said of his salvation.

Genesis 19, verse 29, 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.

Genesis 19:29

Why is it that this small little bit of faith can be transformed into utter glory?

Because God remembers his promise to Abraham.

And in remembering his promise to Abraham, he remembers that he himself, through the offspring of Abraham, who is Jesus, will come and die like the lizard died.

And he will die this death on our behalf.

And so when we put our faith in him as the one who rescues us, we might be raised up with him in glory.

And we might be counted as righteous as Christ by faith alone.

And what does that faith look like?

It can look just like this sliver, just staying focused on Jesus.

And God takes that like a mustard seed of faith and transforms us so that we become new creations, so that this lust that guided us around like this terrible lizard becomes this glorious steed that we ride off on into glory, up into the mountains.

So that there is nothing in us, there is no sodom that we can carry in our hearts that won't be transformed even by this little sliver of faith the Lord takes.

Righteous Lot.

Look at what we've seen of him in this story.

If Lot looks like anything, he looks like this ghost that is in love with his own lizardly lust that we'd want to look at him be like, just get away from me.

Like you've been despicable throughout this whole story.

But look at how the gospel transforms him.

He has been, there's probably a better word.

Than this, but like immortalized in scripture, right?

Inscripturated, that's the better word, as righteous lot.

Is that not a picture of riding off on this glorious steed by faith alone?

Jesus is calling you to lay down your whole life to him, the whole of your life, to lay down those little sodoms.

But look at the exchange that he's calling you to make.

He's saying, get rid of that lizard for this glorious steed.

He's saying, lay down your life, that way you might find it.

This is the hope of the gospel.

So be encouraged to put to death those idols that command us and head off towards the Christ who saves.

Take confidence that in even the littlest faith that you turn over to him, it is enough that he might transform even our own hearts.

All right, let's take a question.

Does Yahweh calling down fire from Yahweh from heaven point to the Trinity?

Oh.

Oh, like as in like this is like a Holy Spirit type of thing, like at the day of Pentecost.

Um I'd have to do some more exegetical work to buy it, but maybe.

Uh there could be some sort of connection there.

Um, the fire being being uh uh like the fire of the day of Pentecost.

Uh there could be some sort of connection.

I I'm not sure.

Uh it'd be a bit of a jump for me, I wouldn't say it.

Okay.

That's our question.

You get an uh maybe, I don't know.

Now let's take communion.

And oops, I lost my spot.

Excuse me.

Technology's betraying me in real time.

Paul writes in First Corinthians, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you.

That the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread.

When he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

In Christ's death, we take faith that he can take our death and transform it into a resurrection.

As we eat together of this meal, that's what we are proclaiming.

Holy Father, I pray that you would bless this time of communion.

Lord, that we would reflect what are the tiny sodoms that you call us to lay down before you.

Lord, during this time of communion, let us make it an act of laying those down.

And in faith, Lord, let us look forward to the glory that you offer and your grace towards us.

Lord, we praise you for grabbing us by the wrist to bring us into your rescue.

We praise you, Lord, in Jesus' name.

Amen.