40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 40 Minutes In The Old Testament: Episode 27

Episode Date: October 7, 2015

We finally get out of Sodom but discover a lot about ourselves on the way.

Hey, Dan here. Dear listener, if you enjoy 40 Minutes in the Old Testament, I'm guessing that you would enjoy some of the other things we have going on at the newchristholdfast.org. We have a new article up every morning, Monday through Friday. We have five podcasts, a videocast, and we're doing a conference in February. There's other things we want to do, and all of this takes an enormous amount of time. All of this content is free, but we do need to be able to hire somebody to help us manage it, to get it out on time, and to keep the quality high.

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Hello. And the man Chad Bird. Hey, everybody. Thanks for listening in. All right. Now, real quick, there is a conference that you guys need to register for, and I know Chad just really wants everybody to be there. He's desperate to meet all of you guys, so you need to do it.

I am. I am. You need to sign up now. We've got a great lineup of speakers, a great place to go, lots of good theologies, so sign up. Love to meet all of you. All right. And you can do that by going over to christholdfast.org

and then go over to the conference page. And there is registration forms there, and there is hotel information. So you can get a discounted room, which we have some rates worked out with the local hotels there. And you can go to Orlando in February. So February 18th through 20th, Orlando, Florida. That's still a little ways off. Get that time off work.

start saving that money and uh and hopefully we will see you guys there chad where are we at today well we left off with a bit of a cliffhanger uh if you didn't know the story then you no doubt have been just barely able to sleep since we since we wrapped up this last time because we are in the middle of chapter 19 of genesis and uh it's the middle of the the story of Sodom and Gomorrah and the impending destruction of those those two cities and what's happened is that uh first of all God told Abraham that he was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah and of course we have Abraham's uh petitionary prayer he's he's standing between God and Sodom and he's he's asking well what if there's 50 what if there's 45 all the way down to 10 righteous people

and the conversation leaves off with god making no promises he basically says yeah i won't destroy it on account of the 10 and we'll pick up with abraham's reaction later on but the story shifts in chapter 19 to two of the three visitors to abraham two angels going down into the city of sodom and as they go through the gate of the city lot greets them he bows to the ground he's very hospitable just like abraham was he the angels are going to spend the night just in the city square but lot says no no he he presses them to spend the night with him brings them into his house he makes a meal for them and they're basically settling down for the evening when all hell breaks loose because it says in verse four that before they went to bed

that the men of the city the men of sodom they surround the house and it makes it appear as if basically the whole male population is there it says that young and old all the people from every quarter of the city surround the house of lot and they call it a lot they say where are the men who came to you tonight bring them out to us that we may have relations with them so that there's a gang of men surrounding the house wanting lot to eject these two visitors so that they can have their way with him kind of just a whole very violent gang rape sort of sort of situation that's brewing here now it's it's fascinating to to listen to to lot's response because first of all lot starts out by saying that uh the men are acting wickedly he says he says he goes outside

he he shuts the door behind him and he says please my brothers do not act wickedly so he starts out starts out good but it's at this point as we talked about last time that lot comes up with an unbelievable uh second option because he says instead of me giving my two visitors to you i have another idea listen i've got two daughters and both of them are virgins so here here's what i'll do i'll bring them out to you and you can do to them whatever you want just don't do anything to the men who have come under my roof so that's where we left off that's where we left off with the story last time so what we get to do i might be crazy i might be crazy but i'm trying to come up with a good analogy here but

it's a it's a strange thing to be like brothers brothers don't act wickedly here's my daughters it's like brothers don't rob this bank have you seen this bank i don't i don't understand i mean this is a weird this is a weird like it's a weird option here you know brothers don't do heroin have you tried crystal meth you know i mean i don't i don't get it points to the hardness of the sinful heart for sure i mean the the hardness and the blindness of of somebody walking And, um, you know, even in just, we all are afflicted with a sinful nature and it all blinds us to some degree or another to where we don't, we don't really know, uh, we don't really know good from evil.

Oftentimes our solutions to one evil problem is another evil solution. Yeah. We tend to add sin to sin. Uh, maybe that's the, maybe that's a lesson here that we, we think that we have an option we think we have a choice but in fact uh both our choices end up being just both egregious both both sinful uh so no let me don't don't sin in this way let's send in some other way don't commit this evil instead let's commit this other evil instead and maybe it was a spur of the moment decision on on on lots uh on lots part uh maybe it maybe it wasn't it really doesn't matter

because that tends to be what we do when we're confronted with options. We see this sin, and we say, well, we can't do that, so let's do this. Or maybe there's a third option. Maybe there's a third sin that we can do. But it doesn't matter which way we go. As long as we are moving in that direction, we're just going to get embroiled further and further and further into sin. unless of course

unless of course God intervenes and rescues us from ourselves rescues us from these variety of sinful options that are before us I don't know that's to me that's the lesson that is

screaming forth from lots of actions here yeah yeah don't do this wicked thing have you seen this wicked thing yes yeah have you brothers have you considered this wicked thing instead yeah yeah there's a there's a variety of options here and all of them all of them are bad uh interestingly and i don't want to get too far ahead but at the end of this story at the end

of this chapter we'll see that uh the daughters who were just about to be unwillingly and probably unwittingly pushed out the door into into into uh attack into sexual assault end up turning the tables on their father but that's just a tease for what comes at the end of the chapter let's see what happens so a lot puts forward this other evil option but the the men of the city won't have anything to do with it uh they they are determined they're not interested in two virgin daughters uh what they're interested in are the the two men and only the two men and so to pick up the story they tell a lot stand aside and they go on to say as if speaking to each other this guy he comes in as an alien and already he's acting like a judge now we will treat

you worse than them and they press hard against lot and they uh they go near to basically to to break the door down so lot's uh option b did not turn out too well first of all he's not even one of them i mean he is and he's not he's uh lots in a a unique situation because he comes in as an alien it's the same word that's used earlier to describe uh uh abraham he's a he's not one who is who is a citizen of the land he's a he's a resident alien so he doesn't have any rights lot really doesn't have any rights here either but the people say you come in you're an alien and now you're acting like you're one of us in fact you're acting like you're one of the judges who can tell us what to do and so they try and uh get past him to uh break down the door

and uh it's it's at this point that the two men intervene uh we were talking before the episode uh before we started recording about the uh this was the uh the the bible that you uh what was it it called that you were watching with the ninjas oh the bible miniseries man yeah the bible miniseries is in the bible miniseries for those of you who have watched this evidently it's at this point where the uh uh the uh the makers of the show get very creative in their interpretation of the events because the angels uh are uh pulling ninja moves with their with their swords and starting to to uh kill these various men of this yeah these are not very rapable angels turns out these guys are ninjas to the max yeah they they picked the wrong they picked the wrong

guys to mess with well that's not exactly uh not exactly what happened in the in the biblical account because what happens is these guys they reach out their hands and they bring a lot into the house with them and they and they slam the door so they save a lot from himself basically they say you know before you do or say anything else that is stupid and and ridiculous and evil we're just gonna pull you inside we're going to save you from what's about to happen and they're not finished yet because what they do is they they strike 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 doorway now it's

a i've taken a look at the hebrew of this particular verse and it turns out that blindness is probably not the best translation here the word only occurs sanvarim is the the hebrew word it only occurs one of the time in the old testament in the book of second kings chapter 6 verse 18. you may recall the story uh the aramean troops were looking for elisha and elisha calls upon god to strike them with this sondering with this with this blindness and so as the story unfolds It turns out that Elisha goes up to these Aramean troops, and they don't recognize him. And he ends up leading them into the very city where they are surrounded by the enemy. So this same word that occurs in 2 Kings 6, verse 18, with this kind of blindness,

is really not what we think of as blindness. When we think of blindness, of course, you can't see it all. This is like a sometimes translated as like a blinding light there or some kind of confused vision. So it's almost a comic scene. You have these guys who who demand to know these two men in the biblical way. They demand to know them, but they're they're so confused now they can't even find the door. So it's a comic scene where these guys are fumbling around and trying to find their way around. but their vision is so messed up or so blurry or whatever it is that they can't even find the door to the house.

So this is the way that the angels rescue Lot. They bring him inside and then they smite the people outside with some sort of visual impairment so they can't find the doorway. so we have a uh a brief uh a brief pause here where everything is at least semi-safe we no longer have the threat of the men breaking down the door and taking lot or taking his daughters or taking the two men and doing with them what they want and so the story picks up there with the men telling lot or asking lot they say who else do you have here and they say you know you have a son-in-law or your sons or your daughters or whoever

you have in the city bring them out of the place for we are about to destroy this place because their outcry has be some become so great before the Lord that the Lord has sent us to destroy it now it's interesting at this point because up to this moment lot presumably didn't know who these guys were all lot knew is that they were two guys who were visiting town he invites him in he's hospitable to them and then during the middle of the night we have all of this happening outside his outside his home but up to this point lot is unaware as to the true reason for their for their visitation so now they are basically disclosing their identity to him

they're telling him that they are the the the messengers from the lord and here's what the lord is going to do i don't know why but it's i it's uh it seems odd to me that they have to ask him these are angels saying who else you have here i mean don't they already know but but but they ask him anyway they say well okay what other family do you have here do you have uh they have sons do you have sons-in-law your daughters whoever you have it's time it's time to get him out and uh as as the story goes on we find out that the only people the only people that lot has in the city besides his immediate family in the house are his sons-in-law we'll get to that we'll get to that in just a minute the uh what the angels tell him is that the outcry

has become so great that god has sent them to destroy that's the same word this uh hebrew word that we heard in the last chapter uh chapter 18 uh verse 20 where it says that the outcry of sodom and gomorrah is indeed great it's a it's a that to saw a coward in hebrew is a it occurs a lot of a lot of different places usually it's in reference to the anguished cry of somebody who's oppressed so there was a to saw a car that went up from the israelites when they were oppressed in the land of egypt now what this to saw khan the case of sodom is uh i don't know because it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of people there who are crying out because they are oppressed but that's what the lord hears the outcry of what's going on in the city so what happens

picking up here with verse 14 once Lot is informed of who these messengers are and what's about to happen then he goes out. He somehow gets out of the house and he

goes to where his sons-in-law are and it says who were to marry his daughters so these his daughters were engaged to these men. They were already called sons-in-law because at least for the Israelites, an engagement was well nigh to a marriage. You'll recall that when Joseph thought that Mary had been unfaithful to him,

he was going to divorce her. Even though they weren't married yet, the betrothment or the engagement was so serious that it required a divorce to end that. So here, these are called his sons-in-law, even though they were not yet married to his daughters. They were only betrothed to them, and thus his daughters were also still virgins. Yeah, I wonder how these dudes felt about this whole virgin daughter move that he presented. I suspect they were pretty upset.

In fact, it says that Lot goes to them, and he says, he says, up, get out of the place, for the Lord's about to destroy it. But he appeared to his sons-in-law to be jesting. be kidding and and maybe that's one of the reasons why they he appeared so ridiculous to them because he had just offered up their their uh fiancés to be gang raped so how could this guy really be serious about this he's basically ruined his credibility lot has and uh the uh uh oh the uh The word jesting here is the same root word that occurs earlier when God appears to Abraham and to Sarah and tells them that they're going to conceive and have a son, Isaac, and Sarah laughs.

It's the root word for laughter. So if I were to translate this, I'd say, but he appeared to his sons-in-law to be laughable. There's no way this could be true. And I think part of the reason that he appeared that way is because, at least from the perspective of these sons-in-law, there was really no forewarning that this destruction was about to take place. I mean, there was nothing that they could have pinpointed to say, oh, yeah, it looks like God is about to send fire and brimstone down on Sodom and Gomorrah. I mean, presumably everything was going fine. They were engaged. They were citizens of the city. Jesus himself, when he's talking about the last days, says that in the days of Lot, people were, you know, buying and selling,

marrying, giving in marriage, going about their going about their daily business. So one of the reasons that Lot appears laughable or ridiculous is because from their perspective, there was nothing that indicated this destruction was about to fall on on sodom and gomorrah and i think there's a lesson in that too uh because when when we talk about the destruction that is to come when we talk about the second coming of our lord and the destruction of the earth by by fire we often appear to be jesting or ridiculous in the eyes of the world as well And we will continue to be so, because it's going to come like a thief in the night. It's going to come when people think that everything is going well.

And in that way, it's going to be a surprise to those who don't heed the warning of what is to come. That's a story up to this point. after this it says a few hours past pick it up here with verse 15 it says when morning dawn the angels urge Lot up

take your wife and your two daughters who are here lest you be swept away in the punishment of the city and then here comes here comes my I think it's either my favorite or my next to favorite

verse or phrase in this whole chapter beginning of verse 16 after everything has happened you know after it's been this attack by the men of the city and the angels did what they did to to visually impair these would-be attackers and the angels have warned him about what god is about to to do to the city and after a lot you know presumably at least sort of believed the warning because he goes to his son-in-law to tell him, hey, we need to get out. After all this happens, after the angels say, we got to get out of here, beginning of verse 16, it says, but he hesitated. He dawdled. He drug his feet. So what do you think about that? What's

going on with Lot? Because I think that one particular phrase is perhaps more indicative of what of who lot is and what's going on with him than almost anything else in the whole chapter lot delays he drags his feet that is that is a what we what we all do so so much uh this this this thing right here the the place that you're at the thing you're doing whatever this is a dangerous thing this is about to get destroyed so you need to get out and instead of being like

grabbing the suitcase you're like when exactly I mean is it going to be 9 o'clock or 10 o'clock how much time do I have oh it's going to be a little while ok I'm good then I got time then

I got some time isn't that just like us I mean, I was thinking about this this morning when I was looking over this once more, that Lot's hesitation is so revealing about human nature. You know, any of us who have been deeply entangled in the mess of some sin know exactly what's going on with Lot. You know, we've lived in our Sodom. We have sunk roots there. Our lives become enmeshed in whatever it is that's going on in our lives. And we know, we have been told that destruction is coming. We have been forewarned. I mean, there is no uncertainty about it. That if we don't get out, we're going to get hurt, we're going to get destroyed, bad things are going to happen. So in the face of this clear and present danger, we hesitate. Because we don't want to move forward, we don't want to let it go.

So even when we are warned about the destruction that can come, if we don't, then we dawdle, we hesitate, we drag our feet. Because we become so enmeshed in the evil in which we're engaged, we become so rooted to the soil of Sodom that we don't want to move forward. yeah it's a weird thing that you end up seeing you know we'll get there but even with Lot's wife and stuff there but even in this dawdling there is this there's something going on where

you can know definitively that something's really bad and like desire to stay there like there's a there's this sense you know you get it with Lot's wife later and even with Lot that

that he's that he's sorrowful um and that but not not like this like repentant sorrowful like like like i'm gonna miss this place good times very good time yeah like that kind of thing going on you know like uh like sodom's gonna get destroyed but man we made some memories here did we not yeah it's a good time i like i mean we're like that we are like that too um yeah i gotta move on these sweet memories of sodom yeah yeah uh the nostalgia of sodom and gomorrah but it is so true because i guarantee everybody everybody listening to this and and i'm sorry if you're an exception but uh just bear with us because most of us who are listening to this we have been there or we we are there right now uh it's this refusal

refusal to fully face up to whatever the evil was instead we we tend to view it through these years rose colored glasses yeah it was bad but man there were some good times too i mean it was it was really bad but you remember when this or that happened and it was really great and it felt so good and whatever it is that uh that tendency that we all have the old adam will always remain in love with evil whether that evil is present or whether the evil is past he he will not let go of this nostalgic attachment to that which is ultimately his own destruction so what has to happen well when lot hesitates then the angels uh sees him by his hand this is this is a great uh a great follow-up to lot's hesitation so lot just like he can't move

he hesitates. And so instead of reasoning with him, instead of urging him some more, the angels are, they're done with all of this patience. They grab him by the hand, and they grab the hand of his wife and the hands of his two daughters, and they bring them out of the city. And that's the only way that they get out if the angels had done what they what they did if god through his messengers had not basically drug them out of the city then lot would have still remained there until the fire and the brimstone fell and there's a phrase in the middle of that verse which i said i said the earlier phrase was my second most most favorite this this is my favorite verse in the whole chapter because it says that they seized him by the hands and they brought him out of the city

because the compassion of the Lord was upon him. Now, isn't that a telling phrase? The reason that God sends the angels, the reason that God grabs Lot and his family by the hand through these angels and brings them out of destruction is because his compassion was upon him. That's the reason all of this happens. the love of god impels god to rescue his people from destruction it wasn't the god looked down

and he said oh lots of pretty good guy i mean yeah he's got his he's got his problems but he's pretty good guy i'm gonna rescue him no the compassion of the lord was upon him and the compassion of the lord leads to rescue yeah sometimes i love that part yeah man that's awesome sometimes the love of god looks like dragging your ass out of sodom yeah yeah that's exactly what the love of god looks like yeah love of god grabs you kicking and screaming and and drags you out of the destruction into into uh into freedom into salvation that's the way it is with me that's for sure and then to kind of move on here they uh the story gets almost comical at some points here but so they drag him out of the city

and they bring them outside they say escape for your life they say don't look behind you don't stay anywhere in the valley escape to the mountains lest you be swept away and you'd think at this point that lot would have learned his lesson that he'd be like you're right i'm gonna I am going to hightail it to the mountains. I'm going to get as far away from Sodom and Gomorrah as I can. Thank you so much for rescuing us. But instead, instead, Lot says, oh, oh, no, no, no, my lords. I've got a better idea.

I mean, I appreciate what you're saying and everything, but I have a much better idea. He says, look, I know I found favor in your sight and you have magnified your loving kindness to me. I'm not denying any of that. You have saved my life. But listen, I can't escape to the mountains because disaster will overtake me there and I'll die. So look, there's this town. It's pretty close and it's real small. You can almost listen to Lot begging and pleading his way out of what the angels have told him to do. Look, there's a town close by. It's really small.

And is it not small? He says, is it not small? Let me escape there that my life may be saved. And it's at this point, I just, I can't read this without imagining the angels stopping and looking at each other and just shaking their heads like why did God send us on this mission look at what we had to deal with there's definitely a whatever moment

they're like whatever man whatever man okay look they say we'll grant you this request we won't overthrow this little town that you want to go to it's called Zohar

but they say hurry up hurry escape there because we can't do anything until you get there so lot has delayed this whole thing by his refusal to flee to the mountains and instead his desire to go to the little town of zoar so that's what he does and uh it's so weird too like you would think that a guy who sees these two guys sort of strike like an angry mob blind and then they're like we got to get up out of here because this place something bad's about to happen would be like he wouldn't be like what really yeah everything everything that he's seen uh should should very clearly indicate that

he needs to get as far away from there as possible yeah none of it seems to sink in no it's uh it does i i am just struck with you know when we think about it it's easy to go i'm not like that at all but i i really am i really am you know i i've been warned of the destruction to come and yet i continue to find myself becoming lax in my struggle against sin and having to be reminded once again by god's law and oftentimes uh a little bit of uh temporal punishment to to remind me uh of just how bad it could be and i slip back into it again i'm i'm uh so double-faced so two-faced you know i've got one face for god when he's talking to me oh yeah i could take that seriously and then the second uh the next second i turn around i'm like um maybe it's not gonna

happen right away i can doddle i can wait i can hesitate i i've often heard people say well you know i could just pray for forgiveness on my deathbed and god will answer me and and there we go you know it's almost as if lot could have been saying through this whole thing well you know can i delay can i wait maybe maybe i could grow old here and people could just carry me out of my deathbed and i'd be saved yeah i can i can grow old we can spend the rest of our lives here we don't have to forget these memories we can continue to live them and then they can just carry me out of my deathbed and then god can destroy the city that's how it'll work right and uh god is merciful and god pulls lot out of there we haven't we haven't covered lot's wife

though yet that's coming up here yeah let's uh let's get there in fact uh now that that you brought it up uh because it it falls into this whole this whole conversation uh as the story goes on it says the sun rises over uh over the earth and lot gets to zoar and it's at that point that God rains on Sodom and Gomorrah fire and brimstone from the Lord out of heaven he overthrows the cities and all the valley and all the inhabitants of the cities and whatever grew on the ground so it's a it's an utter and complete destruction and I got to throw in one more Hebrew tidbit here because the word uh for he rained on Sodom and Gomorrah that is the word for for for sending rain or deluging it's the same this is the third time it occurs it occurs early

in the creation account that God had not yet sent rain upon the earth, but most significantly it occurs in the earlier account of destruction when God sends the rains that deluge the earth. So this is a rain, a fire that's falling and wiping out all of the inhabitants, burning up the ground so that it's just a smoldering mess after God is finished with this destruction. You know, every time I'm talking to somebody and they talk about, you know, in John, I think it's in John, where Jesus says, or John the Baptist says of Jesus that I baptize you with water.

One is coming after me to baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. And people are like, yeah, the Holy Spirit with fire. I'm like, you don't want that. You don't want that fire part, that fire, that fire baptism. That's not that's not that you don't want that. That's not good. That's not good. that's that's exactly what you said like the deluge of of fire you don't you don't want the

baptism in fire man like that's never a good thing yeah right you know i know we have like these weird phrases in christianity where we have like this burning in us and if i got the like light the fire again i got like a fire in my soul and like the fire are you burning you do not want the baptism of fire like that is not that is not a good that's not yes he will baptize with the holy spirit that's a good one that's a good one and with fire that's not that's a bad one that's that's not a big more kind of baptism yeah that's that's that's not the kind of baptism you emerge from cleansed and whole uh you don't matter you don't emerge from that baptism no that's like the kind of baptism where you go down but you don't really ever come back up but you don't come

up that's that's some of that um you know some of that 16th century anabaptist baptism them right right well there's uh there's one person uh who who doesn't who doesn't come out of this uh in lot's family and that's his wife after we hear about this destruction it says but his wife from behind him looked back and she became a a pillar of salt jesus refers to this in luke 17 he says on that day let not the one who's on the housetop and whose goods are in the house go down and take them away likewise not let let not the one who's in the field turn back remember lot's wife whoever seeks to keep his life shall lose it and whoever loses his life shall preserve it and presumably what happened here is that uh lot's wife dawdled she she stopped

or she turned back or whatever it is, and this fire and brimstone that fell from heaven enveloped her, asphyxiated her, and she became almost like the remains we found at Pompeii. She became this hardened pillar as a result of turning back, looking back, not moving forward. i i i like a quote i found from one of the genesis commentaries by hamilton where uh he says something to the effect of that when god's destruction falls there's no middle ground you're either rescued or you're destroyed it's one of the two so there is there is no middle

there is no middle ground here which is almost what lot's wife tried to try to assume she left but she didn't leave she walked out but she didn't really walk out so there's either life or there's death there's either destruction or there's there's a rescue that is it and we are we're we're like right we are right against it man i thought we were gonna i thought we were gonna knock out the rest of this thing right here but uh yeah i did too i really thought we were gonna to uh get to lot and his two daughters but i guess i guess we're just gonna have to save that for next time i guess so more more lot who knew that there was going to be so much so many episodes on on this guy well see we can't get past lot because we're so much like him i

think that's the issue we see so much of our own biography and lot that he's almost become a sympathetic character because we see him and we're like oh man i am so much like him yeah I have a feeling it will be that way with all of the scoundrels. We're going to get to Samson at some point. We're going to spend like two months on Samson. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, good old Samson. Samson, that's me.

He is our brother. David, we'll be able to spend all of 2017 on David. Definitely will. So, all right, guys. Well, thanks for joining us. get over to ChristFullFast.org lots of stuff for you to read

lots of stuff for you to listen to and one singular conference for you to register for which you need to do do it yeah and we will be back hopefully next week

see you guys later Thank you for watching.