Sodom-The Cesspool of Sin, Part 2

Turn with me in your Bible, if you would, to Genesis chapter 19. I'm having a wonderful time studying the book of Genesis. I'm not sure you're having as good a time as I'm having, but, you know, if you can come every Sunday and join my party, I'd really appreciate that. I'm having a great time studying the Scriptures, and Genesis is a fabulous book. And the more I study it, the more intrigued I am at the characters that are there and how God portrays them to us. As we continue our study in Genesis chapter 19 about Sodom being the cesspool of sin, I want you to follow along with me as I read the first 11 verses.

Now the two angels came to Sodom in the evening as Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground. And he said, Now behold, my lords, please turn aside into your servants' house and spend the night and wash your feet, that you may rise early and go on your way. They said, However, no, but we shall spend the night in the square. Yet he urged them strongly, so they turned aside to him and entered his house. And he prepared a feast for them and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.

Before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, surrounded the house, both young and old, all the people from every quarter. And they called to Lot and said to him, Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may have relations with them. But Lot went out to them at the doorway and shut the door behind him and said, Please, my brothers, do not act wickedly. Now behold, I have two daughters, who have not had relations with man. Please let me bring them out to you.

And do to them whatever you like. Only do nothing to these men, inasmuch as they have come under the shelter of my roof. But they said, Stand aside. Furthermore, they said, This one came in as an alien, and already he is acting like a judge. Now we will treat you worse than them. So they pressed hard against Lot and came near to break the door. But the men reached out their hands and brought Lot into the house with them and shut the door. And they struck the men who were at the doorway of the house with blindness, both small and great, so that they wearied themselves, trying to find the door.

As you recall in our study last week, we began by looking at the contrast of characters. We thought it was important for us to contrast Abraham with Lot. The contrast in characters between Abraham and Lot tells us a lot about these two men and where we need to be in our walk with the Lord. And then we looked at the loss of Lot. Didn't have it in your outline last week, but we have it this week. We looked at his loss way back in Genesis chapter 13, how he longed for Sodom, how he looked at Sodom. And once he looked at Sodom, he began to lean towards Sodom.

Then he lived in Sodom. Then he led in Sodom, all because he loved Sodom. And the end result, he lost. He lost. And what I want you to get out of these seven or eight or nine or ten messages, however many there are in Genesis chapter 19 that we're gonna be together, I want you to realize that whenever you associate with the wicked and give your life to being with them and going the way of the world, you will always lose. You'll always lose. You never win. You never win. Please remember that. I want to get that embedded in your mind.

I want you to grasp it fully. I want you to understand it so much that you leave this place determining to walk with God and never follow in the footsteps of evil. But there are people who will try to convince you otherwise. In fact, back in 1955, there was a man who wrote a book. His name is D. Sherwin Bailey. His effort was to reinterpret the biblical material. No matter what the Bible says in Leviticus or in 2 Peter or in Jude or Ezekiel or 1 Corinthians 6 and verses that we're gonna look at this morning.

In spite of all those verses, this man wrote a book entitled Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition. He argues that the inhabitants of Sodom did not intend a homosexual rape of the angels accompanying Lot and that the real sin of Sodom was its violation of the duty of hospitality to strangers for which indeed Sodom is condemned elsewhere, Ezekiel 16, 49. Now he admits that Jude 6 and 7 which speak of the men of Sodom going after, quote, strange flesh do admit to a reading that makes the sin of Sodom homosexuality.

But he traces this to an intertestamental interpretation that therefore has no binding authority today. What he's saying is that what happens in Jude or what is described in the book of Jude, well that book because there is some question about its biblical authenticity. There are some questions whether or not it should be a part of the original canon. We're gonna throw Jude 6 and 7 out and not even look at that.

But Jude is a book written about what? Apostasy. It's the only book in the Bible dedicated to apostates and our response to them. It's no wonder that those who have apostatized the faith would want to take Jude, take it out of the canon, not make it a part of their original 66 books and not use it to prove anything against what they want to condone doing. But as we begin to move further and further into the last days, in the days of apostasy, people begin to move further and further from the truth.

And believe it or not, there are churches across our country that don't condemn the sin of homosexuality. They don't do that. They don't even condemn the sin of adultery, let alone the sin of homosexuality. They just let it run rampant in their church because there are many people in the churches today that are homosexual and that live in a state of adultery. And therefore, to confront it, to criticize it, to condemn it would be against what they would believe would be the best thing for the attendance of their churches and therefore they don't do that.

But what does the Bible say? What happened in Sodom? What was going on there? Why would God send down fire and brimstone and destroy a city? What was wrong with Sodom and Gomorrah? Why was the sin there exceedingly grave? Why was the outcry great to the ears of God? Turn with me to Ezekiel chapter 16.

Ezekiel chapter 16, remember the prophet Ezekiel? He was preaching to those in Babylonian captivity. He wanted them to turn their heart back to God. He wanted them to understand who God was, that they needed to have a relationship with the living God that they had forfeited and that's why they were in captivity. And listen to what he says to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. We'll pick it up in verse number 44. Behold, everyone who quotes Proverbs will quote this proverb concerning Usain, like mother, like daughter.

You are the daughter of your mother who loathed her husband and children. You are also the sister of your sisters who loathed their husbands and children. Your mother was a Hittite, your father an Amorite, now your older sister is Samaria who lives north of you with her daughters and your younger sister who lives south of you is Sodom with her daughters. Yet you have not merely walked in their ways or done according to their abominations, but as if that were too little, you acted more corruptly in all your conduct than they.

Can you imagine that? You were worse than your sister Sodom. He says in verse number 48, As I live, declares the Lord God, Sodom your sister and her daughters have not done as you and your daughters have done. Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom. This was her sin. This is what she did. She and her daughters had arrogance, abundant food, and careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy. Stop right there. To this I say to the homosexual church, you're right. One of the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah was their lack of hospitality.

That's what the Bible says, but that's not all. They were arrogant. They were boastful. They did not help the poor and the needy. But read on, what's it say? Thus they were haughty and committed abominations before me, therefore I removed them when I saw it. There was something else other than pride and arrogance and a lack of hospitality. They committed abominations before the Lord. Now look at verse number 58.

Excuse me. You have borne the penalty of your lewdness and abominations, the Lord declares. You have borne the penalty, he says to those in Jerusalem. But understand this, that the word for lewdness and the word for abominations always refers, listen very carefully, always refers in the Bible never to hospitality, but always to immorality. Always. You can cross-reference Jude 20, excuse me, Judges 20, where it speaks of rape. You can cross-reference Jeremiah 13, which speaks of adultery and prostitution, and Ezekiel 22, which speaks of incest.

Always speaks of sexual sin. Listen to 2 Peter chapter 2. We'll pick it up at verse number 6. And if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly thereafter, and if he rescued righteous lot oppressed by what? The sensual conduct of unprincipled men. The sexual sins. The sensual conduct of unprincipled men. It goes on and speaks about their lawless deeds in verse number 8. It goes on and says in verse number 10, those who indulge the flesh in its corrupt desires and despise authority.

Verse number 14, having eyes full of adultery that never cease from sin. Verse number 18, they entice by fleshly desires by sensuality. Verse number 19, promising them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption, for by what a man is overcome by this, he is enslaved. The people in Sodom and Gomorrah were enslaved to corruption. That corruption was specifically sexual sin. There were other sins, the lack of hospitality, arrogance, pride, all those things played a part in that, but they were enslaved to that lifestyle, the corrupt lifestyle, the perverted lifestyle, the lawless lifestyle, the lifestyle that marked people out as ungodly.

And those sins were sexual perverted sins. Now turn with me to Jude, verses 6 and 7. You say, Pastor, you know, you're kind of, you know, singing to the choir here. We believe that Genesis 19 is about the sin of homosexuality and God condemned that city. We believe that, and that's good. I'm glad you do. If you don't, for the one or two of you that maybe you don't believe that, well, then we want to give you these verses. But we want you to be well-armed with the text so you know exactly what the Bible says.

Now listen very carefully, verse number 4. For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ. Now stop right there. Jude, of course, is written about apostasy. And in the last days, people are going to stray further and further from the truth. They're going to deny the truth. He says that people have crept in unnoticed, and that's true.

People have come into the church of Jesus Christ unnoticed, and they've turned the grace of God into licentiousness, into lewdness. They have taken God's grace, and what they have done is made it a disgrace. They have come in and said, you know, the grace of God is a wonderful thing, and we would all say amen to that. I mean, if it wasn't for the grace of God saving us from our sin, where would we be? It's God's grace that saves us. It's God who granted us his grace that we might be redeemed from a sinful lifestyle.

But there are some people, they're called false teachers, who go into the church, who teach, yes, God is the God of grace, and because he's the God of grace, you can maintain any kind of lifestyle you want to live. It's okay, because God will forgive you. And they come out against those people who take a strong stand on truth. Those people come out and say, you know what? This is what the Bible says.

You can do those kind of things, and they'll say, well, those people are judgmental. Those people are just too critical. Those people are just too condemning. Those people are just too unloving. If I had a nickel for every time someone said to me that I was judgmental, uncaring, or unloving, I could retire and build a house in Tahiti today, because people say, you know, God's the God of grace, and God forgives. And folks, that's true, but there are some people who forget that not only does God's grace transforms you, but God's grace teaches you to deny ungodliness, worldly lusts, and live righteously and soberly in this present age, Titus 2, 12.

They forget that. If God's grace transforms you, God's grace now is going to teach you, and what is it going to teach you? It's going to teach you to turn from those things that are wrong, to live a righteous life, to live a holy life, to live a sober kind of life in a world that lives an ungodly life. So important to understand that. And then it says this, back to Jude. Now I desire to remind you, though you know all things once and for all, that the Lord, after saving a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe, and angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, he has kept an eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day.

Stop right there. There are certain angels who left their eternal abode. They are called fallen angels. And what they did, we read about them in Genesis chapter 6. They inhabited bodies of the earth, excuse me, these fallen angels, and they decided, these sons of God, decided to commit immoral acts with the daughters of men, thus to produce some kind of demon human race, and therefore God destroyed the world through a flood. And these demons are now in eternal bonds. There are demons that fly around, that are loose, even today as we speak, for we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers of the air, the spiritual forces of wickedness.

But there are some demons that are kept in eternal chains, in eternal bondage, and those are these demons in Genesis 6 and in Jude, verse number 6. This is in verse number 7, just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these, same way as what, these angels, indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example, in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire. They went after strange flesh, heteros, heteros, flesh of a different kind, of another kind, that was a perverted kind.

So, Jude tells us that what happened in Sodom and Gomorrah were that people, men specifically, went after flesh that was strange, that was different than what they should normally go after. It was a sexual sin. It was a perverted kind of sexual sin that God would destroy the city that was taking place on a regular basis. What is our response to all this? What are we supposed to do? I think Jude gives us some insight as to what we need to do. I mean, here's a man who was writing to those who have apostatized the faith.

They have turned their backs on the truth and walked away from it, and they have crept into the church unawares. And we, as the people of God, need to be aware of those kind of people that come into the church, that try to take us away and say, you know what? You got the grace of God. You can live any way you want. It's okay. It's all covered in the blood of Christ. Don't worry about it. How do we respond? And how do we respond to those friends of ours, or those acquaintances of ours, or that work associate of ours that is involved in homosexual kind of sin?

What is it we are supposed to do? Listen to what Jude says. But you, beloved, ought to remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's verse number 17. I think I forgot to tell you where I was. That's Jude 17. That they were saying to you, in the last time there shall be mockers following after their own ungodly lusts. And they says, these are the ones who cause division, worldly-minded, devoid of the Spirit. But you, beloved, you, he says, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ through eternal life.

But you, beloved, keep yourself in the love of God. So, when Jude says you need to keep yourself in the love of God, keep yourself in that location of God's love, he is saying to you, make sure you maintain an area of communion with God where you're able to receive the blessings of God, the blessings and benefits of God, as Abraham did versus Lot. How do you maintain that kind of communion with God where you receive the blessing of God? Not because he loves you more, not because he loves you more, because he doesn't love you more than he loves someone else, but because he wants to bestow a blessing upon you because of your obedience to him and your desire to serve him.

It says over in Ezra chapter 8, verse number 22, the hand of our God is favorably disposed to all those who seek him, but his power and his anger are against all those who forsake him. That's a good verse. There are some who doubt. Have mercy upon them. There are some who don't believe the way you do. There are some who have doubts about the faith. You need to be able to have mercy toward those people. Number two, save others, snatching them out of the fire.

There are those who have been deceived, right? Who are going the wrong way. One day we'll be scorched by God. And if you are preoccupying yourself with waiting upon God and his appearance and witnessing to those who are in doubt and those who have denied or those who have been deceived in the faith, you snatch them out of the fire. Do you know that there are some people that you know that you can literally take them and snatch them from the fire because you are concerned about their walk with the Lord?

And then he says this, and on some have mercy with fear, have fear, hating even the garment polluted by the flesh. There are those who have been defiled. And those people you need to be careful of because as you associate with them, as you begin to win them, you don't partake of that same defilement. Their garments are polluted. Their lifestyle has become corrupted, but you got to have mercy on them too. Have mercy toward those who have doubted the faith and begin to win them to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Could you imagine if Lot had that mentality? Solomon Gamora might even be here today. If he'd had the mentality that there were people who were just about ready to be singed by the fire, he might have been able to tell them about the promised seed of the Messiah. There are some who had definitely doubted, and most of them, if not all of them, were defiled in their garments. And yet as he crept into the city and began to associate himself with those people in the city, he got too close to those people in the city, and the salt and light went out.

He was ineffective. May we, as the people of God, not be ineffective. May we be effective because we are keeping ourselves in the love of God. We are ones who are pouring ourselves into the Word of God, maintaining a relationship with Him, praying according to the will of God, and preoccupying ourselves with waiting upon God, His return, and witnessing for God because we want other people to experience the relationship that we have with the living God. Remember 1 Corinthians chapter 6? It goes on to say the kind of people that will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Then it says, but such were some of you. Some of you were this way, and God saved you. He washed you and cleansed you. If you're here today and involved in some kind of sin, gross sin, whether it be homosexuality, lesbianism, some kind of an affair, some fornication, some kind of sin that you might even think of as gross or too gross, let me help you understand something.

God can cleanse you from that sin. He can wash you clean. He can make you pure, and He can make you holy. He wants to do that. Will you let Him do that today? Will you come to Him in faith, turning from your sin, turning toward Him, that you might receive the wonderful grace and mercy that He has for you, that He might make you what He wants you to be, a kind of person that honors and glorifies His name? Let's pray.