Compromise With The World

Introduction:

And All God’s People said, Amen.

Genesis 19:30 will be our text this morning, as we continue our sermon series in Genesis, we will conclude this chapter.

But as we begin, let’s go to the Lord in prayer.

Prayer: Father, we love you and are grateful for your Word. Knowing that you’ve blessed us in a wonderful way by giving us this book, to read and study. To learn more about you and how we are to live. This book that is God breathed and inerrant. I am so thankful for this church and their hunger to study this book. For we are truly a people of the book. So in this moment Lord, we ask that you will bless and you will speak. That you will save the lost and you will revive Your Church. In Jesus name, Amen.

Introduction:

One day - "Two young men were fishing in their boat above the dam of a river near their hometown. As they were concentrating on catching fish, they didn’t realize that they had drifted until they were not far from the side of the dam. When they realized their situation, the current near the dam had become too powerful for them to keep their boat from going over. And Below the dam the water was strong going over great boulders and through crevices in the rocks. Caught by the swirling waters under the rocks, they never came to the surface. After days of relentless searching, the divers finally found one body, and then, two or three days later, the other." (Gospel Guide)

These men were so focused on catching fish, they drifted right into their death.

Sadly, there are many Christians who drift away from. And if we are honest, all of us Christians have drifted away from God at some point.

And what’s more, we often hear of Christians drift so far, and fall into great sin.

And we could ask , “How did they ever get to this place?

It would be one thing, to see people in living in great sin who are not Christians.

In a sense, that’s the story of Lot. If he were not a believer, we would just say, that the way the world is.

But Lot was a man of God, who compromised with the world.

Last Sunday, we saw the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. And Peter writes that Sodom and Gomorroah is an example for us of eternal punishment, hell.

We saw, The sinfulness of the city, the angels rescue Lot, and as Lot was being saved his wife looked back and was turned into a pillar of salt.

Well, Jesus tells us to about Lot’s wife, too.

Luke 17:32–33 “Remember Lot’s wife. Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it.”

When, you think of her, remember these words of Jesus. She tried to preserve her life, and she lost it.

Imagine Lot told her they have to flee, and she started packing her belongings. Probably nice things, things she loved.

Well, she was not willing to lose those things in order to be saved.

This is what it means to be a child of God.

Luke 9:62 “Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.””

When it comes to following Jesus, what does God require to be saved? Nothing, just faith.

When it comes to following Jesus, what does God require of you? Everything.

If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself take up his cross and follow me. Jesus says to count the cost.

Now, concerning Lot, what we see in his life, a righteous man is compromise with the world.

And there are consequences when the child of God compromises with the world.

He first compromised earlier in Genesis. It came time for them to separate, and Abraham let Lot choose where he would go, and Lot chose Sodom. Lot chose with his eyes. Compromising with the world in doing so.

So as Lot fleas, he and his two daughters, we pick back up in Genesis 19:30.

There are three lessons I’d like to share with you.

1. Compromise withe world leads to fear and isolation.

2. Comprise with the world leads to justifying iniquity.

3. Compromise withe world leads to generational immorality.

But first notice with me in verse 30

Leads to Fear and Isolation.

Genesis 19:30 “Now Lot went up out of Zoar and lived in the hills with his two daughters, for he was afraid to live in Zoar. So he lived in a cave with his two daughters.”

So here, we have Lot going to a small city of Zoar. In the great war of the kings with Abraham, Zoar is called Bela.

But Zoar was one of the cities that near Sodom and Gomorah.

In Genesis 19:24–25 “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.”

well, there were Five cities of the plain, Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboim, and Zoar.

But God did not destroy Zoar because of Lot.

Now, Lot chose to go here. The angel said go to the hills, but Lot asked for Zoar.

If it was to be destroyed, it was as sinful as the others, and if that’s the case, Lot would have just been trying to stay close to the worldly environment he was in.

So Lot ends up, not in the city, but in a cave.

The text says afraid. He is isolated and alone.

He has no wife, he’s lost two other two daughters, no friends, no home, and no livestock.

His wealth is all gone, and here he is.

What a sad story.

And this is where the story of Lot ends. Alone and in a cave.

Friends, that is where sin will leave you. Afraid and alone.

Bonhoeffer writes,” He who is alone with his sin is utterly alone. Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from community. The more isolated he becomes, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him. Sin wants to remain unknown. It shuns the light.”

Thus is the power and destructive nature of sin. when the believer compromises, when we are intised by the world and into sin, their are grave consequences for us.

Let’s read further on. Compromise also leads to justifying iniquity.

Leads to Justifying Iniquity

Genesis 19:31 “And the firstborn said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is not a man on earth to come in to us after the manner of all the earth.”

Genesis 19:32 “Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve offspring from our father.””

Genesis 19:33 “So they made their father drink wine that night. And the firstborn went in and lay with her father. He did not know when she lay down or when she arose.”

Genesis 19:34 “The next day, the firstborn said to the younger, “Behold, I lay last night with my father. Let us make him drink wine tonight also. Then you go in and lie with him, that we may preserve offspring from our father.””

Genesis 19:35 “So they made their father drink wine that night also. And the younger arose and lay with him, and he did not know when she lay down or when she arose.”

Genesis 19:36 “Thus both the daughters of Lot became pregnant by their father.”

How wicked? You would think, how aweful and wicked does a person have to be to do this.

Here’s Lot’s daughters, alone in a gave, convincing themselves of this atrocity.

Notice how they justify this.

our father is old, and there is not an earth a man.

Meaning, because Lot is old, this must be done now.

There’s no other men, well, they were just in a city , zoar, so they likely saw there was other men.

And catch this, even if there were no other men on earth, this is not okay.

Catch this But church, just because sin, looks okay, and just because you justify it, doesn’t make it okay.

Do we not justify our sin? it’s just a little white lie.

It’s not going to hurt anyone.

greed, anger, pride, you name it, and we can find a way to justify it in our minds.

Oh, dad’s old and he’s the last man on earth.

What do we say? DESPERATE TIMES CALL FOR DESPERATE MEASURES.

And so they plan to get dad drunk,

Lot lost everything, family and home.

But he still had some booze.

And let’s see this connection between Lot and Noah.

Noah warned his family of destructin.

Lot went and warned his family of destruction.

Noah and his family were saved, Lot and some of his family were saved.

Lot God drunk and naked and dishonored by his son, and here Lot gets drunk and dishonored by his daughters.

But we need think, it takes a lot of drinking to passout. And this wasn’t just one night, this was two nights in a row.

Lot got drunk and passed out one night. Woke up the next day, probably still drunk and started drinking again.

Now, so far in the bible we don’t have much to say about drunkeness, but we do see the effects of it.

We see a description of the sinfulness of drunkeness., but later in the bible we see the prescriptive teaching on drunkeness.

So Lot gets drunk, and take advantage of him, and lay with him.

It’s incest. There’s no good way to think of this and say it’s okay.

But, is this not something they have learned from?

Remember, they are virgins here. And Their dad had just offered to give these two daughters to a crowd of homosexuals to do as they please.

Although, that didn’t happen.

Here the daughters, influenced by dad, and influenced by the wicked city, falls into such a depraved stated to do this.

If this is not an exhortation to parents.

Parents, what you do and how you live directly effects your children.

There are examples of this in the scriptures. it’s seen in the lives of those we know.

That how we raise our kids matters.

Don’t take the mindset. I provide for my kids and give them a roof over their heads, so that’s good enough.

don’t think, my kids aren’t that bad, they’ll turn out okay.

The Christian parent needs to take this serious, because their children are Gods, created in His image. And we are to steward them, and disciple them. And raise them up in the way of the Lord.

If church is not important to the parent, it’s not going to be important to their children.

If the Bible’s not important to the parent, it’s not going to be important tot he child. And so on and so forth.

And something else,

Last Sunday in Sunday school, we were talking about those weird laws in Levitcus. and how specific they are directly after the exodus from egypt.

Well, as Voddie baucham says, God wasn’t just getting israel out of Egypt he was getting egypt our of israel.

Here with Lot, God may have got Lot and his daughters out of Sodom, but Sodom was still in Lot and his daughters.

And the consequences of Lot’s compromise and the sinfulness of his daughters was so bad,

It led to generational immorality.

Leads to Generational Immorality.

Genesis 19:37 “The firstborn bore a son and called his name Moab. He is the father of the Moabites to this day.”

Genesis 19:38 “The younger also bore a son and called his name Ben-ammi. He is the father of the Ammonites to this day.”

So the daughters were successful, they had children.

Notice the name Moab, it means “from father”

Ben ammi, means son of my people.

These daughters not only did this, they named their children after this.

For the Christian, we name our kids biblical names write, Noah, anna, and andrew, grace and faith.

But they named their son, incest. from my father.

And this immorality spread for generations.

We know that there was a constant conflict between Israel and Moab and the ammonites.

Numbers 25 tells us Moab led Israel into Baal worship on its way into Canaan.

The Ammonites and the Moabites hired Balaam to curse Israel.

And to think there is this generational effect here.

Listen to these words from deuteronomy “No Ammonite or Moabite may enter the assembly of the Lord. Even to the tenth generation, none of them may enter the assembly of the Lord forever, because they did not meet you with bread and with water on the way, when you came out of Egypt, and because they hired against you Balaam the son of Beor from Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse you. .

10 generations.

Yet, the curse on these people was because they did not have faith.

how do we know this.

Well, this little book called ruth.

Ruth was a Moabite, and she married a man called boaz who was from Bethelehem.

And they had a child named Obed.

And obed is the grandfather of non other than King David.

That makes Ruth, a Moabite, the great grandmother of David, and a key woman in the the lineage of Jesus, himself.

In closing: Beloved, if we are to avoid the mistakes of Lot, and there many, we must first confron our sin.

Jesus said Matthew 5:29 “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.”

This is graphic words, but sin is serious.

And sin that goes unconfessed and that continues to grow, not only will leave us lonely and isolated, but it will also lead to disaster with our families.

So Christian, parents, we must address our sins, confess our sins, even the ones no one sees.

And as a church, if we are to see revival, if we are to see genuine Holy Spirit led, and life changing, an awakening amongst God’s people here at First Baptist Church of Pollock, it’s going to start, with the church getting right with God.

It’s going to start with brokeness. With repentance. With the people of God pursuing holiness.

For our time of response, if you are not a Christian, and would like to become a Christian, come forward when the music starts and I’d love to speak with you about that.

But church, let’s every one of us ask God, Is there any sin my life. unconfessed sin. sins we justify, sins of compromise, ask God, if there is anything in me, show me now, so I can get right with you.

Prayer:.....Amen.