Escape to the Mountains
Notes
Transcript
Call to Worship
Call to Worship
To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David the Servant of the Lord.
An oracle within my heart concerning the transgression of the wicked:
There is no fear of God before his eyes.
For he flatters himself in his own eyes,
When he finds out his iniquity and when he hates.
The words of his mouth are wickedness and deceit;
He has ceased to be wise and to do good.
He devises wickedness on his bed;
He sets himself in a way that is not good;
He does not abhor evil.
Your mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens;
Your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.
Your righteousness is like the great mountains;
Your judgments are a great deep;
O Lord, You preserve man and beast.
How precious is Your lovingkindness, O God!
Therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of Your wings.
They are abundantly satisfied with the fullness of Your house,
And You give them drink from the river of Your pleasures.
For with You is the fountain of life;
In Your light we see light.
Oh, continue Your lovingkindness to those who know You,
And Your righteousness to the upright in heart.
Let not the foot of pride come against me,
And let not the hand of the wicked drive me away.
There the workers of iniquity have fallen;
They have been cast down and are not able to rise.
This is the Word of the Lord
Thanks be to God.
Introduction
Introduction
Last week We saw the wickedness of the men of Sodom and their destruction.
We looked at how wicked their sin is and how it is the fulfillment of a society that rejects God ala Romans 1
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Today we’re going to focus more on Righteous Lot and his trajectory.
We’re going to backtrack a little bit and go over some of the verses we already read through last week.
2 Peter 2:7 describes Lot as ‘righteous’, but even so, he did not finish the race of faith well and is definitely not someone we should emulate.
Body
Body
When the morning dawned, the angels urged Lot to hurry, saying, “Arise, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be consumed in the punishment of the city.” And while he lingered, the men took hold of his hand, his wife’s hand, and the hands of his two daughters, the Lord being merciful to him, and they brought him out and set him outside the city. So it came to pass, when they had brought them outside, that he said, “Escape for your life! Do not look behind you nor stay anywhere in the plain. Escape to the mountains, lest you be destroyed.”
Then Lot said to them, “Please, no, my lords! Indeed now, your servant has found favor in your sight, and you have increased your mercy which you have shown me by saving my life; but I cannot escape to the mountains, lest some evil overtake me and I die. See now, this city is near enough to flee to, and it is a little one; please let me escape there (is it not a little one?) and my soul shall live.”
And he said to him, “See, I have favored you concerning this thing also, in that I will not overthrow this city for which you have spoken. Hurry, escape there. For I cannot do anything until you arrive there.”
Therefore the name of the city was called Zoar.
The sun had risen upon the earth when Lot entered Zoar.
So the morning after the angels saved Lot from the depraved sodomites and warned him of the destruction of his city, no one heeded his warning
Though Lot believed the Angelic warning, even he did not seem to be taking it very serious
“Arise, take your wife and your two daughters… lest you be consumed in the punishment of the city”,
But Lot “lingers”
In multiple places in Scripture, you can find that God will not destroy the Righteous with the wicked, but when a city is exceedingly wicked, God will remove the righteous by force so that the city can be destroyed
Ezekiel 14:14 “Even if these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they would deliver only themselves by their righteousness,” says the Lord God.”
Because God is merciful to “righteous Lot”, the angels take his, his wife, and his daughters hands and remove them from the city
Once outside, they are told “Escape for your life! Do not look behind you nor stay anywhere in the plain. Escape to the mountains, lest you be destroyed.”
God gives them the exact location to be safe.
God had just delivered them from the City, and has now told them where to go next, but Lot complains that it is too far and he cannot make it.
God delivers us by His power, tells us what to do next, and we act like we will have to do the next part relying on our own strength alone.
Righteous Lot had seen the power of God displayed in delivering him multiple times now in the past 24 hours, yet he still doubts the sustaining power of God.
Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ;”
Then the Lord rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, from the Lord out of the heavens. So He overthrew those cities, all the plain, all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground.
But his wife looked back behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.
Luke 17:28–33 “Likewise as it was also in the days of Lot: They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built; but on the day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. Even so will it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed. “In that day, he who is on the housetop, and his goods are in the house, let him not come down to take them away. And likewise the one who is in the field, let him not turn back. Remember Lot’s wife. Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.”
Remember Lot’s wife.
An everlasting reminder for the righteous to not turn back to their sin, lest they perish in it.
The sin of Lot’s wife: She looked back forfrom behind him. This seemed a small thing, but we are sure, by the punishment of it, that it was a great sin, and exceedingly sinful.
1. She disobeyed an express command, and so sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, which ruined us all.
2. Unbelief was at the bottom of it; she questioned whether Sodom would be destroyed, and thought she might still have been safe in it.
3. She looked back upon her neighbours whom she had left behind with more concern than was fit, now that their day of grace was over, and divine justice was glorifying itself in their ruin.
4. Probably she hankered after her house and goods in Sodom, and was loath to leave them. Christ intimates this to be her sin; she too much regarded her stuff.
5. He looking back evinced an inclination to go back; and therefore our Saviour uses it as a warning against apostasy from our Christian profession. We have all renounced the world and the flesh, and have set our faces heaven-ward; we are in the plain, upon our probation; and I is at our peril if we return into the interests we profess to have abandoned. Drawing back is to perdition, and looking back is towards it. Let us therefore fear, Heb. 4:1.
And Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord. Then he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain; and he saw, and behold, the smoke of the land which went up like the smoke of a furnace. And it came to pass, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when He overthrew the cities in which Lot had dwelt.
Abraham is not looking towards Sodom in the same manner as Lot’s wife.
He is not longing for that wicked place, but rather observing to see the outcome of his prayers
Early in the morning, he returns to the place where he had interceded on Sodom’s behalf with the Lord.
He sees that the city and the plain is indeed being destroyed
When we have prayed, we must look after our prayers, and observe the success of them. We must direct our prayer as a letter, and then look up for an answer, direct our prayer as an arrow, and then look up to see whether it reach the mark.
Those that have, in the day of grace, most earnestly interceded for sinners, will, in the day of judgment, be content to see them perish, and will florify God in their destruction.
God answered Abraham’s prayer
Things turned out better for Lot than he deserved.
Because of the prayers of the Righteous, the relations and friends of godly people fare the better for their interest in God and intercessions with Him.
Then Lot went up out of Zoar and dwelt in the mountains, and his two daughters were with him; for he was afraid to dwell in Zoar. And he and his two daughters dwelt in a cave. Now the firstborn said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is no man on the earth to come in to us as is the custom of all the earth. Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve the lineage of our father.” So they made their father drink wine that night. And the firstborn went in and lay with her father, and he did not know when she lay down or when she arose.
It happened on the next day that the firstborn said to the younger, “Indeed I lay with my father last night; let us make him drink wine tonight also, and you go in and lie with him, that we may preserve the lineage of our father.” Then 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.
Thus both the daughters of Lot were with child by their father. The firstborn bore a son and called his name Moab; he is the father of the Moabites to this day. And the younger, she also bore a son and called his name Ben-Ammi; he is the father of the people of Ammon to this day.
Maybe because of the guilt of choosing Zoar as his refuge instead of trusting God
or maybe because the rising water in the plain that would become the Dead Sea threatened his new residence
He made it to the mountains that God originally told him to escape to.
Just a quarter century earlier, there was not enough space in the land for him and his Uncle, now he and all that he has reside in a cave.
Even those who are righteous in God’s eyes because of His mercy and grace, can be brought low and humbled for their sin.
He could have returned to Abraham, and been placed under his protection, but perhaps he was too ashamed to do such a thing.
We cannot judge a man’s heart.
If we only had Genesis 19 to judge Lot’s salvation, I would believe him to be condemned to hell.
His life does not reflect a life of faith.
Sin and tolerance of sin dominate his story.
We don’t know how Lot dies.
perhaps he repents of his abominations and quietly leads a life of faith to the end of his days.
We do know that God counts him as righteous.
The end of his story in Scripture is not meant to placate professing believers in their sin.
Conclusion/Application
Conclusion/Application
2-fold application for us believers about the warning against sin, judgement and destruction
We must have an urgency in warning others
We must not tolerate sin or have a lackadaisical attitude about it.
We must not turn back to our sin, or even glance back as Lot’s wife.
Lot was commanded to escape to the Mountains.
We must escape to the mountain of our salvation, to mount zion.
Psalm 48 “A Song. A Psalm of the Sons of Korah. Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised In the city of our God, In His holy mountain. Beautiful in elevation, The joy of the whole earth, Is Mount Zion on the sides of the north, The city of the great King. God is in her palaces; He is known as her refuge. For behold, the kings assembled, They passed by together. They saw it, and so they marveled; They were troubled, they hastened away. Fear took hold of them there, And pain, as of a woman in birth pangs, As when You break the ships of Tarshish With an east wind. As we have heard, So we have seen In the city of the Lord of hosts, In the city of our God: God will establish it forever. Selah We have thought, O God, on Your lovingkindness, In the midst of Your temple. According to Your name, O God, So is Your praise to the ends of the earth; Your right hand is full of righteousness. Let Mount Zion rejoice, Let the daughters of Judah be glad, Because of Your judgments. Walk about Zion, And go all…”
Our salvation is in Christ alone
Do not seek salvation short of that goal, even if it is a little city.
Heartache and sin await those who do not press on diligently to the Mountains.
