In the name of
Jesus. Amen. Dear friends, how much righteousness is
necessary to assuage God’s wrath? How
much does it take to prevent His great anger against sin? That seems to be the question that Abraham is
asking God. “Lord if there are 50
righteous in Sodom, will you destroy them with the others? What about 45, or 40, or 30, or 20? Will you destroy even ten righteous ones
along with all the unrighteous that fill the streets of Sodom?”
And God’s answer
is an answer of grace and mercy. “No. If any righteous are found in Sodom, it will
not be destroyed.
FOR
ALL IT TAKES IS ONE RIGHTEOUS MAN TO SAVE THE UNRIGHTEOUS.”
God, according to
his conversation with Abraham, sends down two angels into Sodom, to investigate
the depravity of the place. Abraham’s
nephew Lot sees them enter the city and invites them to spend the night in his
own home, promising to care and protect them.
He fed them a meal, he cared for the angels. And then the doorbell rang.
The men of Sodom
had too seen the angels enter town. They
saw their beauty, a beauty that comes only from being in the presence of
God. And they were envious of it. And so they desired to sleep with the angels,
to rape and gang-bang them all through the night, and thus defile what God had
made holy. In other words, they were
sinners like us, jealous and self-concerned.
God will not stand
for this gross sin and lack of faith. He
sends Lot and his family out of the town quickly, and as they are climbing out
of the valley, he rains down His judgment in the form of fire and brimstone. Literally burning the guilt of the town away
to the foundations. God will not stand
for any sin, not Sodom’s, not yours, not anyone’s; he will destroy it from
before his face. So God destroys Sodom,
but Lot escapes due to righteousness, even as the Sodomites get their due reward
for their unrighteousness.
But wait a minute,
isn’t this the same Lot who as they are camping on the edge of the valley over
the ruins of Sodom drinks himself into a stupor? Not once, but twice? Isn’t this the same Lot who in his drunken
state impregnates both of his daughters?
How can this man be righteous enough to avoid the condemnation of the
Sodomites? I mean if he’s an incestuous
drunkard, he’s not really that different from the people of Sodom is he? What is it that allows Lot to be saved, and
all the others to be destroyed?
The answer is that
the righteousness that saves Lot isn’t his own.
It’s a righteousness that comes from outside himself. It’s not even the intercession of righteous
Abraham in our text that saves Lot. For
Abraham himself wasn’t righteous based on his own work. He lied, saying that his wife was his sister. He failed to trust God, instead listening to
his wife – impregnating Hagar instead of waiting for God’s work to bring about
Israel through Sarah. In fact, scripture
tells us that Abraham’s righteousness wasn’t even from himself, but rather,
that “Abraham believed in God, and God counted it as righteousness.”
Abraham believed
in a savior, he believed in a rescuer, sent by God, through whom the whole
world would be blessed. And so it wouldn’t
be the righteousness of 50 that saved Abraham and Lot, or of 45, or of 40 or 30
or even of ten? It would be the
righteousness of one. That one would be
righteous, and his righteousness would count for all. That one would take on our flesh, live
perfectly, suffer and die for sin on a cross, rising again on the third
day. That One was Jesus.
So Lot was saved
by faith in Christ, a faith he received by hearing the preaching of his uncle
Abraham. Lot was saved by hearing the
word of God preached by those two angels, “Lot get out of here, don’t turn
back.” Hearing the words of God, and
believing them, saved Lot. He believed
in a coming savior through the word of God, and by that faith, he avoided the
wrath of God as it was poured out on the unrighteous of this world.
Dear friends, that’s
a faith we share as well. It’s a faith
we too have received by hearing preaching and His Word. It’s a faith we understand even more clearly
than Lot or Abraham, as we have seen the wooden cross outside Jerusalem, where
our savior died. We have been united
with him through the waters of baptism, where we were clothed in the perfect
and holy righteousness of Christ.
That righteousness
covers all our sin. The sins of unbelief
are gone in Jesus. The sins of
selfishness and of countless vices are covered and hidden by the righteous
blood of Jesus. God has made us alive
together with Him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the
record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside,
nailing it to the cross.
And so the
righteousness of the one Christ, saved us, as it has saved Lot, and as it has
saved Abraham and all believers in Christ.
It’s a righteousness from outside ourselves. A righteousness that overcomes the sin of
all, and promises eternal life to all who believe in the one who earned it for
us. In the Name of Jesus.
