Dear Church family,
It was my joy to worship the Lord with you last Sunday. Many of you joined the community service in Bainbridge and a small group of us attended our Church service.
For our Church service, I preached on Genesis 19, the story of how God destroys Sodom & Gomorrah. One of the most remarkable things about that story is how it highlights the mercy of God. You would figure that it highlights the fierce judgement of God, which it does, but I came out of that story seeing more of God’s mercy than judgement, and that’s because I’m one among the righteous and so are you. And praise God that He spares people like you and me from judgement despite how close we may look to deserving it!
That represents the life of Lot. He was a worldly Christian who looked dangerously close to the culture of Sodom. While he did contrast it by showing hospitality and morality unlike them, proving his righteousness, he also showed that he was too in love with the world. He lingered in Sodom and God had to drag him out of there. He flirted with worldliness. And he contrasts Abraham’s life. Abraham was a friend of God, but Lot was a friend of the world. Abraham was a sojourner. Lot was a settler.
We should want to stay as far away from Lot’s tainted “Christianity” as possible! God help our Church to not have Lots. But inevitably we do and there are Lot like tendencies in all of us.
Now here’s the exceptional news within this story. God saved a guy like Lot! God saved Lot from judgement even though he flirted with the world. God saved a ‘righteous’ guy like Lot even though he ruined his life. This is not to minimize the danger of spiritual compromise, but it is to optimize the praise of God’s mercy!
And I want to point out how God’s merciful salvation in Lot’s life shows us how God controls our sanctification (spiritual growth) as Christians. We often talk about how God has the merciful & gracious power to make us Christians (justify us), but we typically don’t use the same amount of time talking about how God has the same merciful and gracious power to make us grow spiritually.
One of the aspects of growing spiritually is God preventing us from digressing and pulling us out of vexing temptations that could destroy us (thereby potentially eradicating any possibility of growth!). This is the case of Lot. God pulled him out of that evil city that vexed his soul and God saved him. Lot lingered in that city while God pulled him out. It goes to show that God received all the credit for His rescue of Lot. Hasn’t God done this to us a million times? He has dragged us out of a situation that would have dragged us down with the ungodly. We dragged our feet, but God pulled us out. Praise be to God who saves us a million times within our spiritual growth.
As Romans 5:9 says, “Since, therefore, we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God.”
And 2 Peter 2:7-9 says: “and if he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked 8 (for as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard); 9 then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials…“
A part of our growth includes God rescuing us from our trials and temptations. This is what God mercifully did to Lot, dragging him out of his city, and I am sure that God will do this to our Church family too.
In fact, I am praying that God would rescue the righteous among our Church, especially of the worldly variety, from their trials. This is what Abraham did in chapter 18: he prayed God’s rescue over Lot. And chapter 19 ends by saying, “God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow when He overthrew the cities in which Lot had lived.” (v29)
We get to intercede for God’s people, WOL Chapel! God hears us, and God can use our prayers like Abraham to rescue other Christians from great dangers.
Use your privilege with God today, free access into His throne, and beg Him to have mercy on some righteous Christian relatives and Church mates of yours that may not look so righteous at all times. And you can bank on God showing mercy on them as He is merciful. Their growth, in part, depends on your prayers!
With love in Christ,
Aaron
P.S. This Sunday, we’ll see that the guy, Abraham, who interceded for Lot’s rescue, standing outside the city and looking really good, will need rescued himself as he will act just like Lot! So we all need rescued with God’s mercy, even the more ‘mature’ Abrahams among us.
