This chapter is disturbing. Seeing God’s judgment poured out on Sodom and Gomorrah is bad enough, but seeing the people’s behavior leading up to and in response to God’s destruction of the cities is, perhaps, even worse.
Growing up I remember learning that Sodom was destroyed because the practiced homosexuality. As I read the text that was not the only issue – not even the main issue – that God had with the city. These men completely gave themselves over to their sexual desires to become rapists. Not only that, but they came together to as a group to take their victims by mob. They’d have had to watch one another. They approved of the rape. They enjoyed watching and waiting for their turn. This is far beyond, “they-were-gay-so-God-destroyed-them” kinds of reasoning. They were violent, abusive, and perversely wicked.
Every bit as hard to digest is Lot’s response to this. First of all, he chose to continue to live there knowing what the people of the city were like. He had arranged marriages with men of the city for his daughters. I’m not saying that Lot approved of what these men did. On the contrary, he sought to protect the visitors. However, he did not remove himself from their midst with a tacit form of acceptance of their behavior. In addition, when the moment was at its worst, he offered his daughters up to the crowd to satisfy their violent sexual appetite. The angels had to take Lot and his daughters by the hand and pull them out of the city to rescue them, and even then Lot’s wife turned back and was turned to a pillar of salt.
God displayed great mercy and patience with Lot. And to be frank, Lot didn’t deserve it.
Then we get the dialogue between Lot’s daughters. How drunk did they have to get Lot so that he’d have sex with them? What caused them to think this was a good idea?
This chapter is a sad, sad, picture of the depravity of humankind. Life apart from God’s love continually devolves into stranger, sicker, more destructive behavior. Accepting sinful behavior in others also influences us and it erodes our own morality as we accept improper behaviors as normal. I wonder sometimes if we’ve bought into so much of the culture around us that if God were to come and take us from it if we’d turn back longingly to this world.
Thanks be to God that He is patient with us. (And we don’t deserve it either.) He is patient with his children when our hearts tend to be drawn back to sin. He is also patient with the world and He sends us to the world with the message of His love and forgiveness. He wants all people to repent, believe in Jesus and receive His salvation. But He won’t wait forever. And a day will come when He will destroy this world and start anew to give all who believe in Jesus’ sacrifice a heavenly, sinless, eternal home.
Until then, we get to be God’s messengers to extend the hope we have in Jesus.
Father in Heaven, You are patient, and I thank and praise You for being patient with me. I sometimes take your love for granted and forget your justice. Help me to know how deep Your love for me and all people truly is, and make me a messenger of your salvation in Jesus Christ, my Lord. Amen.
Growing up I remember learning that Sodom was destroyed because the practiced homosexuality. As I read the text that was not the only issue – not even the main issue – that God had with the city. These men completely gave themselves over to their sexual desires to become rapists. Not only that, but they came together to as a group to take their victims by mob. They’d have had to watch one another. They approved of the rape. They enjoyed watching and waiting for their turn. This is far beyond, “they-were-gay-so-God-destroyed-them” kinds of reasoning. They were violent, abusive, and perversely wicked.
Every bit as hard to digest is Lot’s response to this. First of all, he chose to continue to live there knowing what the people of the city were like. He had arranged marriages with men of the city for his daughters. I’m not saying that Lot approved of what these men did. On the contrary, he sought to protect the visitors. However, he did not remove himself from their midst with a tacit form of acceptance of their behavior. In addition, when the moment was at its worst, he offered his daughters up to the crowd to satisfy their violent sexual appetite. The angels had to take Lot and his daughters by the hand and pull them out of the city to rescue them, and even then Lot’s wife turned back and was turned to a pillar of salt.
God displayed great mercy and patience with Lot. And to be frank, Lot didn’t deserve it.
Then we get the dialogue between Lot’s daughters. How drunk did they have to get Lot so that he’d have sex with them? What caused them to think this was a good idea?
This chapter is a sad, sad, picture of the depravity of humankind. Life apart from God’s love continually devolves into stranger, sicker, more destructive behavior. Accepting sinful behavior in others also influences us and it erodes our own morality as we accept improper behaviors as normal. I wonder sometimes if we’ve bought into so much of the culture around us that if God were to come and take us from it if we’d turn back longingly to this world.
Thanks be to God that He is patient with us. (And we don’t deserve it either.) He is patient with his children when our hearts tend to be drawn back to sin. He is also patient with the world and He sends us to the world with the message of His love and forgiveness. He wants all people to repent, believe in Jesus and receive His salvation. But He won’t wait forever. And a day will come when He will destroy this world and start anew to give all who believe in Jesus’ sacrifice a heavenly, sinless, eternal home.
Until then, we get to be God’s messengers to extend the hope we have in Jesus.
Father in Heaven, You are patient, and I thank and praise You for being patient with me. I sometimes take your love for granted and forget your justice. Help me to know how deep Your love for me and all people truly is, and make me a messenger of your salvation in Jesus Christ, my Lord. Amen.
Comments