Fix Your Eyes on the Lord (2)

When Evil Abounds

Genesis 19:1–9 NIV

The two angels arrived at Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gateway of the city. When he saw them, he got up to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground. “My lords,” he said, “please turn aside to your servant’s house. You can wash your feet and spend the night and then go on your way early in the morning.” “No,” they answered, “we will spend the night in the square.” But he insisted so strongly that they did go with him and entered his house. He prepared a meal for them, baking bread without yeast, and they ate. Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house. They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.” Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him and said, “No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing. Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.” “Get out of our way,” they replied. “This fellow came here as a foreigner, and now he wants to play the judge! We’ll treat you worse than them.” They kept bringing pressure on Lot and moved forward to break down the door.

When our focus in on ourselves as the center of the universe, our actions are driven by what meets our wants and desires. Sin abounds.

When our focus is on our relationship with the Lord and we taste and see that all we need is found in Him alone and He is sufficient in all things, our heart and actions can truly be given to fulfill the command of the Lord to think of others as greater than ourselves.

Philippians 2:3 NIV

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves,

Hesitation

Genesis 19:10–22 NIV

But the men inside reached out and pulled Lot back into the house and shut the door. Then they struck the men who were at the door of the house, young and old, with blindness so that they could not find the door. The two men said to Lot, “Do you have anyone else here—sons-in-law, sons or daughters, or anyone else in the city who belongs to you? Get them out of here, because we are going to destroy this place. The outcry to the Lord against its people is so great that he has sent us to destroy it.” So Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who were pledged to marry his daughters. He said, “Hurry and get out of this place, because the Lord is about to destroy the city!” But his sons-in-law thought he was joking. With the coming of dawn, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Hurry! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be swept away when the city is punished.” When he hesitated, the men grasped his hand and the hands of his wife and of his two daughters and led them safely out of the city, for the Lord was merciful to them. As soon as they had brought them out, one of them said, “Flee for your lives! Don’t look back, and don’t stop anywhere in the plain! Flee to the mountains or you will be swept away!” But Lot said to them, “No, my lords, please! Your servant has found favor in your eyes, and you have shown great kindness to me in sparing my life. But I can’t flee to the mountains; this disaster will overtake me, and I’ll die. Look, here is a town near enough to run to, and it is small. Let me flee to it—it is very small, isn’t it? Then my life will be spared.” He said to him, “Very well, I will grant this request too; I will not overthrow the town you speak of. But flee there quickly, because I cannot do anything until you reach it.” (That is why the town was called Zoar.)

Was Lot a righteous man?

2 Peter 2:6–10 NIV

if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawless (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)—if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment. This is especially true of those who follow the corrupt desire of the flesh and despise authority. Bold and arrogant, they are not afraid to heap abuse on celestial beings;

Righteousness is not about the quality of our actions but the motivation of our heart. Were Lot’s eyes fixed on the Lord?

While Lot was convicted by the detestable actions of his neighbors, Lot was not moved to greater dependance and trust in the Lord, the source of righteousness. Instead, Sodom had found root in Lot’s heart. He relied on his own wisdom, strength and resources to address the circumstances of life. This is seen as Lot offers up his own daughters for slaughter to try and feebly provide hospitality and protection the visitors.

Lot’s lack of trust is further seen in his hesitation and separate planning apart from what the angels of the Lord had instructed. In the heat of the moment, Lot was scheming to deliver himself from harm.

Lot does not trust the Lord fully. His heart is divided just as many of ours are divided. His decisions do not match the belief in his heart.

The Deliverance of God

Genesis 19:23–29 NIV

By the time Lot reached Zoar, the sun had risen over the land. Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the Lord out of the heavens. Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying all those living in the cities—and also the vegetation in the land. But Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt. Early the next morning Abraham got up and returned to the place where he had stood before the Lord. He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, toward all the land of the plain, and he saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace. So when God destroyed the cities of the plain, he remembered Abraham, and he brought Lot out of the catastrophe that overthrew the cities where Lot had lived.

We so often question God about His ways because we do not understand or see what is happening in its fullness. We question the fairness of the Lord. God is always right and fair and when His ways differ from ours, we must recognize that it is often because we are tainted by our own distorted views of justice and goodness.

When we fix our eyes on the Lord, we will always find the fullness of His deliverance. When we become distracted and we focus on ourselves or the world around us, we will find that our deliverance has passed us by and we have been swept up in the current of a broken world.