Sodom

Good morning.

Today's reading is from Genesis chapter nineteen, verses one through eleven.

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

When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them and bowed himself, with his face to the earth, and said, My lords, please turn aside to your servant's house, and spend the night, and wash your feet.

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

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

But he pressed them strongly, so they turned aside to him and entered his house, and he made them a feast, and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.

But before they lay down the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people, to the last man, surrounded the house.

And they called to Lot, Where are the men who came to you tonight?

Bring them out to us that we may know them.

Lot went out to the men at the entrance, shut the door after him, and said, I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly.

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

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

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

But they said, Stand back, and they said, This fellow came to sojourn, and he has become the judge.

Now we will deal worse with you than with them.

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

But the men reached out their hands and brought Lot into the house with them and shut the door, and they struck with blindness the men who were at the entrance of the house, both small and great, so that they wore themselves out, groping for the door.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Thank you for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

And I've got a couple of announcements to make, and then we'll get into our text for today.

So on May 9th, we have a baby dedication coming up.

So if you have had one of those COVID babies that hasn't been dedicated yet, uh we'll be celebrating and dedicating those babies on May 9th.

Also, on May 16th, we'll uh, which is just the week after that, we'll be having a baptism.

So if you'd like to be baptized, uh then come on, we've got baptism.

Um so sign up for that as well.

You can sign up for both of those in the app or in the calendar on our website.

Also, uh we've got an evangelism workshop, uh, which will be hosted on Wednesday evening, May 12th.

We don't have a particular time for that, but Jacob Carr will be teaching it.

Jacob, would you stand up?

And then people can say, hi, yeah, that's all right.

So this is we're trying this type of like workshop thing, uh, which we haven't done before, but this is going to be a one-evening kind of like evangelism introduction and help us to gain an understanding and a vision for evangelism in our own lives and in our community.

Um when we kind of assessed areas that we wanted to grow as a church, uh, equipping us to be able to share our faith and to kind of take risks to share our faith well in ways that are truly winsome in a culture where that can be difficult to do and extremely vulnerable to do, sometimes even costly to do, uh, relationally at least, um, uh, we wanted to equip you.

So if that's something that you have even just like a half ounce of inkling towards, sign up for it.

Um and if you don't uh care about evangelism, then there will be an opportunity to repent right before communion.

All right, so I'll go ahead and uh oh, one more announcement.

So actually the Friday after that Wednesday, if you want to have a really redemption-y week, uh uh my wife and I are hosting a new people welcome at our house.

So if you're uh just like new, and basically by new we mean like uh like since COVID.

Okay?

Like if you've come to the church since COVID, that likely means we haven't gotten to know you as well as we would like.

Uh and we'll uh just be having just a gathering, kind of an informal hangout at our house on uh Friday, May 14th.

So uh mark your calendars.

Let's pray.

Holy Father, today we are moving into a text that is challenging and unnerving.

And one of the one of the darkest stories that we see in all of Scripture is in today's text.

Holy Father, I pray that you would give us openness of heart to be able to hear even the challenging things in your word.

Lord, would you give us a submissiveness to you so that we receive your word as the word of God?

Uh we allow you to stand in judgment over us, and would you give us humility to not stand in judgment over you?

Lord, help us to see your goodness shining through and in even the uh the most challenging and difficult things that we see in your word.

And Lord, I pray that uh beyond all that we would be able to see your grace and your gospel shine through, even out of such deep darkness as we see in the text today.

Holy Father, we pray that you would do these things uh through your word and our hearing.

In Jesus' name, amen.

So you heard me read the story for today's sermon, right?

Pretty weird story.

Uh we are uh preaching through Genesis, and so that means we don't get to skip the weird parts.

We just have to move through them and receive them as well, uh, as the word of God that they are.

Uh but there's an analogy that I want us to understand this story through.

Uh and it how many of you saw the show Stranger Things on Netflix?

Yeah.

Okay.

Six of you.

So uh for those six, everybody else can leave.

We are uh so in Stranger Things, there's this place where everything is bad, and it's called the upside down.

And it's the perfect phrase for a place where everything has gone backwards.

Uh and what it is, is it's uh it's this place where all the monsters come from, and it looks just like the hometown that all the main characters live in, just a small suburb in Indiana.

But everything, although it looks the same, it's decaying and descending into death.

And it's the the upside down, the inverted version of what Hawkins, Indiana is supposed to look like.

Sodom is the upside down.

Sodom is the perfect inverse of Eden.

In almost every way that Eden is supposed to be, we see the upside down version of it in Sodom.

This is what the world looks like when humanity is left totally to their own devices.

We turn upside down.

Now, upside down is a wonderful phrase because it implies that there is a right side up, exactly.

And we see that the right side up is very particular in scripture, that it's a world that is oriented towards the glory of God, and that any world that isn't oriented towards the glory of God, we might think opens us up to a huge realm of opportunity and possibility.

That there's one way that things can be oriented towards God, and there's a multitude of ways that things can be disoriented away from God.

But what scripture shows us with a picture like Sodom is that there's really only two options.

There's right side up and there's upside down.

Both are constraining.

But one is the type of constraint that humans need that actually leads towards our liberation, like a fish being constrained to water, leads to its flourishing.

The other is a constraint towards our own passions, where we become slaves to our own self-interest.

So in today's story, we're going to look at the shape of the upside down, what Sodom looks like, how it's inverted in particular.

Then we're going to look at Lot's appeasement of the upside down, and then we're going to see Lot's rescue from the upside down.

So the upside down, the appeasement, and the rescue.

Let's get started.

Genesis 19, 1, the upside down.

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

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

Okay, so the angels that we saw last week with Abraham headed towards Sodom, and Sodom is to the south, and it is in a valley.

It's one of the cities of the valley.

Now, Eden, we remember, is on a mountaintop.

And so we're already seeing geographically this sort of picture in scripture of this inverted world that we're heading into, away from Eden, down south into the valley.

And the angels that are approaching Sodom, uh, Lot sees them coming, and Lot is sitting at the gate of the city.

Now, when we hear gate of the city, we think the edge or the periphery of the city.

And so we might think, okay, this is demonstrating that Sodom is, excuse me, that Lot isn't really involved with Sodom, but he's more on the outskirts of it.

But that's actually a miss a misunderstanding of the way that gates operated in cities at this time.

The gate is where all the trade took place.

This is like the civic center of the city.

And so to see that Lot is sitting at the gate actually demonstrates that he's deeply involved in the culture of Sodom.

He likely has a place of authority within the city, his voice matters, he's involved with the particular events of the city.

Lot is engaged with the culture of Sodom.

And we see that right away.

But in Lot's response to the two angels that are walking towards him, we see the same picture that we saw with Abraham.

He runs out to greet them, he bows himself towards them to give them honor.

He compels them to stay at Lot's house.

So he's seeking to show them this hospitality of these strangers that are coming to visit the city.

But the angels, remember, they're on a particular mission, and that mission is to survey the city, to confirm the wickedness in it, and then destroy the city.

And so their intention was to stay in the city square.

But Lot compels them.

Lot says in 19 verse 3, chapter 19, verse 3, he says, but he pressed them strongly.

So they turned aside to him and entered his house, and he made them a feast and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.

The story starts to take on this tone of haste and of Lot sort of grabbing these angels and saying, No, don't go into the city.

He knows what his city is like.

He understands what lot what the city of Sodom truly is.

And so he compels them in and then he bakes a meal that's that's different from Abraham's meal.

Here we see he feeds them unleavened bread.

That means it's made hastily.

There's a quickness that's taking place in this whole meal.

So you can see that Lot is kind of playing this game of I've got these folks that I want to be hospitable to, but I'm in this terrible environment that I'm also kind of a part of.

And he's trying to shuffle them into some safe corner away from the dangers of the city.

But the dangers of the city are not kept at bay.

Instead, the reality of Sodom uh comes knocking on Lot's door.

And this is what it sounds like.

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

And they called to Lot, Where are the men who came to you tonight?

Bring them out to us that we may know them.

And that's no in the biblical sense, because it's in the Bible.

Now this is a clear and concise picture of the inversion of Sodom.

And we can see the total inversion of Sodom with three aspects of this description.

The first is the totality.

Every man of the city of Sodom gathered at the door.

This is indiscriminate.

And the the writer, Moses, the writer of Genesis, makes clear to show that there's no generational distinction.

So that means this isn't the youth of Sodom who have gathered together against the older generation to rebel against some consistent way that the city used to function in.

No, all the generations of Sodom are in total agreement of what they want to do.

They see these strangers come in, and they are in total agreement of what they want to do to those strangers.

So we see the totality, there's this generational totality of turned inwardness, of a desire to do harm.

Next, we see the inversion of Sodom demonstrated in the homosexuality of the desire.

So this demonstrates a perfect inversion of the Garden of Eden.

Notice that the text really seeks to drive this home, just so you don't think I'm reading this into it.

It says it says men three times in the description of who gathers.

There are no women gathering.

It is just the men of Sodom.

And the men are gathering to sexually seek out the men who are being held in Lot's house.

And we know this because they say, Where are the men who came to you tonight?

Whenever the Bible is seemingly redundant like that, it's because it's driving home a particular point.

And we see men used four times in three sentences, it's because they're conveying something particular about this interaction.

Now it's important for us to recognize the inversion that's being demonstrated to us, the upside-down nature of this interaction as compared to the Garden of Eden.

So in Eden, we see Adam and Eve are created, and what are they commanded to do?

Be fruitful and multiply, take dominion over the earth.

And you see, those are those are the same thing, right?

Being fruitful and multiplying and taking dominion over the earth, that's the same action because it's a generational project of taking dominion over the earth.

It takes more and more people to be able to do that.

In the same way, we see this mirrored in the promise to Abraham, which is he's promised children, generations of children, and the land.

But those are the same thing, right?

Because who gets the land that Abraham has promised?

It's his generations of children.

And so there's this interweaving of dominion and multiplication.

And we see that the picture of Adam and Eve multiplying is a picture of man's relationship to God, man's rightly ordered relationship to God, where the way that Eve relates to Adam is the way that us, the church, the church, relates to our Lord.

And so there's a hierarchical disposition to this story where things are properly ordered towards the Lord, and then that's demonstrated at all these various levels of our existence.

And so here in this story, we're being shown a clear inversion of this dynamic where these levels of existence are being disordered.

And so in the homosexuality of the desire, we see a turn inwardness of sexuality as something that's a part of a fruitfulness and a multiplication to something that's turned totally inward to a self-satisfaction.

What is the purpose of sexuality?

It's my own satisfaction.

Because I love rules.

And uh so that means I lived in the dorms for all four years.

I was a four-year freshman.

And we uh uh there's nothing cool about being an RA.

But I did get to uh take freshman orientation four times.

So maybe there's not nothing cool.

And each time there was a uh there was a sex ed portion.

And there was one rule that conditioned what CU Boulder teaches to their incoming freshman uh about a proper relationship to sex.

And uh I can sum it up like this make sure you get what you want.

So it it's it's described as consent, but it it's it's less than consent.

What they taught you how to do was how to have a a negotiation with your potential sexual partner, and you would describe precisely what you would like to get out of it, and then a successful sexual encounter was you getting what you wanted out of it.

Do you see how that's precisely the same sex ethic as Sodom?

It's the same sex ethic because it's one that says sex is meaningful insofar as it satisfies me.

This is the picture that's demonstrated to us that the scripture uses homosexuality as an archetypal example of, which is instead of choosing the other, as we do when we submit to the Lord, we choose someone that's not like us to come in submission to.

Instead of choosing the other, we choose ourselves.

So it's an archetypal picture of the sex ethic of consent, of only consent.

Don't hear me say that consent is somehow wrong, but of a type of consent that says, as long as I get what I want out of it, that's success.

It's turned totally inward, totally inward.

Finally, we see the inversion of Sodom demonstrated in the entitlement, the entitlement of the men at the door.

There's no sense of the agency of the angels.

There's no agency considered of the sexual partners that the mob of Sodom is seeking.

Instead, the only driving consideration, the main fact of reality to the mob outside the door is the satisfaction of their own desires.

This is the highest goal, and it is the highest calling of reality.

The satisfaction, in any way, of their own desires.

And we see that demonstrated in this entitlement.

And so in Sodom, we see demonstrated relationally and sexually a perfect inversion of what we see in Eden.

It's a perfect inversion.

There is an inward turn that matters only, not generationally or fruitfully, but matters only with the immediate satisfaction of my own desires.

That's the fundamental force guiding the ethic of Sodom.

Now let's look at how Lot tries to appease the mob.

In Genesis 19, verses 6 through 7, Lot went out to the men at the entrance, shut the door after him.

Genesis 19:6–7

Okay, do you see that picture?

Angels, right, are in here that he's entertaining.

And he he's like, okay, you guys stay here.

He opens the door and he closes it after him.

It's as if he's saying, Angels don't overhear what I'm about to do.

He's creating a barrier between the conversation he's about to have.

So here he is in private with the mob.

Okay?

Instead, I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly.

So there are two sorts of dynamics here.

One is the my brothers.

So there is a clear identification that Lot is making with himself and Sodom.

And he says, do not act so wickedly.

So he's trying to bring about some sort of change in their behavior.

But what I want us to grasp here is that there is a clear difference between appeasement and defense.

He is not attempting to, in any real meaningful way, defend his guests.

Instead, he's simply seeking to appease the mob.

Now, what does appeasement mean?

Appeasement is where you try and stop the values that are going against your own by adopting some of the values that are going against your own.

See, that's appeasement.

Saying, look, I will adopt some of Sodom's values if by doing so I can try and placate the full force of their values coming into my life.

I don't know if I should say this.

A lot of preachers do that and call it contextualization.

That's not contextualization.

So here's what we see Lot do.

Genesis nineteen eight, he says, Behold, I have two daughters who have not known any man.

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

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

Lot adopts part of the Sodomite culture, where he says, I'm going to allow for the legitimacy of the driving fact of your lives to be your own satisfaction.

I'm not going to challenge that assumption.

Instead, I'm just going to try and tweak the ways that you're seeking that satisfaction.

Do you see the shape of appeasement?

He adopts this fundamental assumption, which is the driving fact of reality is your own satisfaction.

And in an attempt to appease, he just tries to shift the object of their satisfaction.

And what he offers is his own daughters.

Do you see how this value of hospitality that we thought was reigning in Lot's life, when it's estranged from the other values of faith, begins to look like an idol to which he will sacrifice anything, even his own daughters.

Now, what we're being shown here is that when Lot is away from the angels, standing outside the door, just with the mob of Sodom, Lot is no different from Sodom.

Who can read this and not think what Lot does here is at least just as bad as what the rest of Sodom is doing.

At least just as bad.

And we'll actually see the generational legacy of Lot result in child sacrifice.

From Lot come two nations, the Moabites and the Ammonites.

The Ammonites worship a god named Molech.

And Molech demands child sacrifice.

It will become a normative part of the culture of the Ammonites.

Do you see the generational component to that in the story of Lot?

Do you see how Molech, that god, is the mob that you must appease, and in order to do that, you will even sacrifice your own child to do so.

Lot sinks to the same depth as the Sodomites.

But he's unsuccessful in his appeasement.

In verse nine, it says, But they stand, but they said, Stand back.

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

Now we will deal worse with you than with them.

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

Here's a question.

What does it look like?

The one inviolable ethical code is in Sodom.

Any ideas?

What do they what do they say Lot did that was wrong?

Judged.

Sodom's totally free.

The only thing you can't do in Sodom is judge one another.

That's the one rule of Sodom.

The one rule is you can't call wickedness wicked.

That's the rule.

And therefore, wickedness reigns.

Any limiting of access to fulfill their own carnal desires.

Well, that's the one inviolable rule.

There's no limiting of access to fulfill my own carnal desires in Sodom.

So Lot doing the best he could has jeopardized his family, enraged his townspeople, and now he is pressed up against his own door, almost being crushed to death by the mob.

So let's say his appeasement has not gone very well.

Lot keeps digging himself into a deeper hole.

But then this strange thing happens.

Lot is rescued.

Genesis 19, 10 through 11.

But the men reached out their hands and brought Lot into the house with them and shut the door.

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

Okay, so the angelic men, they they reach out the door and they pull Lot in and they rescue him.

So Lot is now safe, back behind the door, away from the mob, and then they strike with blindness, the mob.

And the mob is now stuck outside, blind, groping for the satisfaction of their own desires.

That is the result of Sodom.

They're blind and enslaved to their own passions, groping after them, unable to fulfill them.

Now, the first time that we saw, actually the last time, not the first time, the last time that we saw Sodom in this story was when the king of Sodom approached Abraham and offered to him a kingly status.

Sodom is the offer, so far in our story, of all that the world has to give.

Sodom is the picture of don't choose to submit to God, submit to no one, and look at the world of promise that is offered to you.

No constraints.

Live however you would please, dwell in complete freedom with no judgment ever coming your way.

And what is the result of that?

What happens when you follow the trajectory of that offer?

Complete isolation, blind, groping, unable to satisfy, and enslaved to your own passions.

The total liberty becomes the picture of total slavery.

That's the upside down.

We don't choose whether or not we will serve.

We choose who we will serve.

There's right side up, or there's upside down.

And we can see this trajectory of Sodom.

I think when we think of Sodom, we we, and even from the story, we get pictures that are that are kind of just like Halloween, you know, and they're like scary or spooky or something, and it's like, man, Sodom, I'd know if I was in a place like that.

But what we should think is what pictures do we see in our culture where the upside down is celebrated?

Where where slavery, where when we move towards slavery as uh enslaved to our own passions, we call it freedom.

Do you see how it's everywhere?

This is a plunging towards slavery.

But here's, I think, one of the most most perfect pictures of it in our culture.

And it's it's the picture of blind outside the door groping.

So there's been several reports that have come out that uh internet pornography's traffic during the pandemic like skyrocketed.

You know, jumped like 25%.

There's one, I don't remember the statistics, but there was a considerable jump during just six hours that Zoom went down.

Just six hours that Zoom goes down and internet pornography just goes through the roof.

And what is that a picture of?

Alone, blind to nothing but a screen, and what is the guiding reality of the world?

My own satisfaction.

Do you see how in a world like that we don't need each other?

And then what does that result in?

You know, there's so there's there's like so many groups uh online of like secular groups of uh people trying to uh break their addictions to internet pornography.

Because what does it result in?

It it doesn't, it it results in men being unable to desire to participate in sex in real life, in the real world.

It results in impotency of young men.

But do you see how this is like the perfect picture?

It looks like total freedom, total liberality.

Achieve anything that you you desire, any of your desires can be met with just a search.

You get to be like God towards your desires, like like Solomon with his thousands of concubines could never have imagined the concubines that we have, the harems that we carry.

And it results in a blindness, enslaved groping.

Now, there's this wonderful book, and if this is resonating with you particularly deeply, because you're someone who's like myself, who struggles with unwanted sexual behavior, uh, there's a wonderful book by um a man named Jay Stringer, and it's called Unwanted.

And it's the most helpful book that I've I've ever read regarding sexual sin.

And uh there I'm looking out at a at a room full of people that struggle with sexual sin.

I can tell because I'm looking out at a room full of people.

See?

And uh so I I what I'd what I'd love is uh write that write the name of that book down.

Um I don't see any of you writing.

I'm the only one.

It's called Unwanted.

It's by Jay Stringer.

If you're interested in delving into this, to saying, like, look, this is a real thing in my life that I feel enslaved to in particular, and I don't want to anymore, then let's go after this as a church.

Let's lean into this together.

Uh and I'd love to put something together, just as simple as like a book club or something, uh, where we could do this.

But I was feeling compelled to provide some practical action after this sermon.

But here's what we see in Sodom.

Sodom, lest you think you're not a part of it.

Sodom is any mode of being that places your personal satisfaction as the center of reality.

That is man's rebellion against God.

That we we no longer become people of worship.

Instead, we seek to make ourselves the objects of worship in the world.

So that the whole world arcs towards us.

In dating relationships, I'm so sorry if any of you are dating.

Dating is the worst.

But it's the only way we've got to do this in our culture.

Um uh so uh in dating relationships, we often hear this language expressed in the language of compatibility.

Compatibility is uh is a phrase that we use to uh uh describe another individual in terms of our assessment of them is whether or not they allow me to satisfy the desires that I think are most important in me.

That's a terrible way for us to assess one another.

Okay, this is a real pick-me-up.

Lot is not different from Sodom, but he gets rescued.

Why?

Why is the mob outside groping in blindness and why is Lot reached out by the angels and drawn in?

Why is Lot rescued?

The answer isn't in the text that we read today.

It's actually at the end of the story, which we'll cover next week, but you'll just get to hear this part preached twice.

It should be.

We hear why in verse 29.

This is after Sodom was destroyed.

Verse 29 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.

Why was Lot rescued?

Because God remembered Abraham.

And what does it mean for God to remember Abraham?

We'll hear this language throughout the Old Testament.

Whenever we see people rescued, when the Egyptians are brought out of Egypt, excuse me, when the Hebrews are brought out of Egypt, we'll hear God say, because he remembered his promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

And here we see Sodom is rescued because God remembers his promise to Abraham.

And what is his promise to Abraham?

That in trusting God that he will rescue you, God counts that faith as righteousness.

And what do we see, the righteousness, Peter will actually describe Lot as righteous.

We can't say that he is righteous because of anything that we see him do in the story.

What does Lot do?

The only thing he does is follow his rescuers.

That's the whole demonstration of his faith.

That he follows the ones sent to rescue him.

And God, remembering his promise to Abraham, counts that as righteousness.

Now, what does the promise to Abraham really mean?

That from Abraham all the world will be blessed from his line.

And we see that happen in Jesus.

Lot is rescued because God remembers his promise to send an intercessor, to send a mediator who will rescue us.

And how does Jesus rescue us?

He rescues us by coming in to Sodom.

And when the people but what Sodom is called at that point is Jerusalem.

And what the people of Jerusalem do when goodness enters their town, just like when the angels, when goodness entered Sodom, they kill Jesus.

And when Jesus stands in front of the mob, behind in between the mob and the people that he seeks to rescue, Jesus doesn't try to appease the mob.

Instead, he lays himself at their mercy and is murdered by the mob so that we might be saved.

And then by faith in him, we are reached out and brought into his kingdom, and counted righteous while we are no better than Sodom.

Here's what's missed.

Do you want to know the difference between a fundamentalist and somebody who gets the gospel?

The difference is the both can tell that Sodom is bad, right?

Both look at Sodom and say, that's bad.

And how the parallels between Sodom and our cultural moment, look, you don't have to be like a you don't have to have a sociology degree to be able to draw these things, right?

So they both look at Sodom and say, that's bad.

The fundamentalist says, but I'm not like Sodom.

The person who gets the gospel says, that's bad.

I can see it's bad.

But I'm just like it.

What I need is to be saved.

Because even when I try and tear the Sodom out of my own heart, I can't.

I need someone who can come in and stand between the mob and me.

Because I I can't save myself.

That's the gospel.

What a strange position, right?

We look out at our culture and we say, that's bad.

But it's not worse than me.

What did I need?

I needed to be saved by Christ.

What's the good news?

Jesus.

Jesus saves sinners.

He saves sinners.

Praise the Lord.

I hope today that you find Sodom in your own heart.

And that you see how Christ has taken on the punishment of Sodom.

And that by faith in him we might be freed from even the Sodom in our own heart.

And that that might look like little sparks of light breaking out in our own lives, around our city, in the Sodoms that we participated in our culture.

That we might start to see this light spread from hearts that are transformed by the gospel.

Because we knew we needed grace to be saved.

Okay.

Let's pray.

Actually, are there any questions?

Sorry, I forgot.

Any questions?

Is this a question?

Sometimes it feels like the only way to change people is by appeasement.

What's the alternative?

How do we get a seat at the table if people won't take us seriously because we are so different?

What are you in my head?

That's this is this is such an important question.

Oh, okay, so here's my working hypothesis.

One, we have to have a posture of humility.

If you're talking to people as someone who uh can bear witness to Sodom but knows they aren't a part of it, then you've already lost.

You're you you you aren't preaching the gospel anymore.

Uh secondly, did you notice that in the shape of Lot's appeasement, and the way that I kind of defined appeasement for this, is the adoption of some values for the sake of dismissing the rest of them.

We have to have a clear understanding of how of where our biblical values come from and how those are fundamentally different than the values that are otherwise espoused in our culture.

And so there's two things.

Abraham Kuyper's theologian, the turn of the 20th century, uh late 1800s into the 1900s.

And uh he has these two categories that he speaks in.

He talks about the antithesis, which is important to understand.

And the antithesis is showing that there is a fundamental irreconcilability between the Christian view of the world and the secular view of the world.

I describe that in this sermon as the upside down, right?

Things are either oriented towards God or they're oriented away from God.

It's very binary.

But there's the second concept that he equally employed, which he called common grace.

Now, common grace is this understanding that there is an aspect of God's graciousness and goodness built into all parts of creation.

And so we have to be wise in discerning what is good here that God is seeking to redeem and demonstrate what is antithetical to that project of redemption.

Do those categories make sense?

Those helpful categories, I hope.

And finally, I think we need to not underestimate that we need to not underestimate the intelligibility of the simple gospel.

That the God who saves us by grace alone.

Nothing.

So if you have that to share, uh you can't lose in a conversation.

You can't lose.

That was a lot of stuff.

So let's pray.

Holy Father, we pray that you would make us a church that grasps your gospel, that discerns the wickedness that's in the world, but that does not view ourselves as any less needing to be saved from it.

Lord, would you grant us that that gospel humility?

And Lord, I pray that we would see a transformation of our culture and our world, and that we would start to see that culture manifest even in our own church, in our relationships with one another, that value things like love that doesn't just seek to be satisfied by the other, but that lays itself down for one another.

There's no picture of that in our world, Lord.

Let our hearts be transformed by it, that we might become properly ordered, and that your glory might be the end that we seek at.

That your glory might be the place where we find our greatest satisfaction.

Father, lift us up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11, 23 to 26, 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, and 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, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Oh, the Lord died that we might be redeemed.

The Lord put himself between the mob and us, that we might by faith take up that promise and be rescued, wicked as we are, sodomites as we are, we, even we, might be spared by his sacrifice.

Holy Father, I pray that you would bless this meal.

Lord, that that in our partaking of it, the gospel might inform the whole of our lives, and that we might feel an assurance of the rescue that you give to us because of the work that you have done, not because of anything that we bring.

Lord, we lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.