We live today in a world which refuses to believe in God our Creator. We live in a world which refuses to understand that God means what he says when he warns us not to sin. We live in a world where the media confuses the notions of love and lust; where the vital meaning of love is lost, and so too the proper appreciation of the God who is love. That God who came in the flesh to live as a man and suffer in our place. The God who gave his life in the flesh to be the sacrifice to save us from our own wilful sinfulness – our deliberate rebellion against God our Creator.
In Genesis 19 we read of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Now, this is usually seen as the condemnation of homosexuality. Period. But it needs to be read for what it says and it needs to be taken in context. Yes, homosexuality is condemned in the Bible; but so too is all sexual aberration from God’s norm of marriage between a man and a woman. Adultery was condemned with equal force. The penalty was death !
We know from the teaching of Jesus teaching and the apostles that no human being is righteous before God. No-one. We should not then search for categories of sin or people to condemn as if they were somehow worse than other sinners. Sin is sin, and God condemns it, whatever form it takes. It is only human beings in the perverseness of their sinful estrangement from God who make one sin worse than another, indeed who make a virtue out of condemning particular behaviour when the truth before God is that ALL sinful behaviour is wrong.
What is overlooked in this account in Genesis 19 is that Sodom was consumed with lust. Anyone of any sexuality can be consumed with lust. In Sodom, lust had become so all consuming that it was aggressive and violent, overturning all norms of civilised behaviour between human beings. Rape was routine and unremarkable !
If we look about us at the world today, we see a society consumed with lust and greed. A society where God and God’s norms are not just denied, but despised and rejected. We therefore see in every domain, among all people – regardless of sexuality – a mindset of ever greater desire for the material goods of this world; ever greater desire for sensual indulgence; a loss of self discipline and of due regard for the norms of civilised behaviour.
Sodom in the Old Testament is but a picture of the world to come which will be judged by God on the Final day of Judgement, when God ends this present world and human existence here.
We have here an illustration of the doctrine of God’s Final Judgement on us all. Sodom was destroyed by fire. The apostle Peter tells us in his second letter that
THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH WHICH ARE NOW, BY THE SAME WORD ARE KEPT IN STORE – RESERVED UNTO FIRE AGAINST THE DAY OF JUDGEMENT AND PERDITION OF UNGODLY MEN.
The apostle Peter goes on later in this third chapter of his second letter [epistle] to say:
BUT THE DAY OF THE LORD WILL COME AS A THIEF IN THE NIGHT; IN THE WHICH THE HEAVENS SHALL PASS AWAY WITH A GREAT NOISE, AND THE ELEMENTS SHALL MELT WITH FERVENT HEAT, THE EARTH ALSO AND THE WORKS THAT ARE THEREIN SHALL BE BURNED UP.
But why does he warn us of such a terrible end to this world we know ?
SEEING THEN THAT ALL THESE THINGS SHALL BE DISSOLVED, WHAT MANNER OF PERSONS OUGHT YE TO BE IN HOLY BEHAVIOUR AND GODLINESS – LOOKING FOR AND HASTING THE COMING DAY OF GOD, WHEREIN THE HEAVENS BEING ON FIRE SHALL BE DISSOLVED, AND THE ELEMENTS SHALL MELT WITH FERVENT HEAT ?
This coming Judgement called the Day of Judgement or the Final Day of Judgement is for EVERYONE. There will be no categories of sinners or ranking of sins. Jesus and his apostles taught that ALL who are without Christ will be condemned.
Only those who have submitted their lives to Jesus Christ will be delivered throught this terrible cataclysm to come. Just as Lot and his family were rescued from Sodom.
How ?
Because God’s messengers came to them and told them to leave, and to go far, far away, and never return – indeed not even look back, as Lot’s wife did and was turned to salt the story goes.
For us the meaning is clear.
We are to heed the messenger of God who comes to us at a particular time in our life with the particular message of Judgement. Yes judgement and condemnation. We are to accept that our lives of sin are condemned, and that we must forsake that way of life, and indeed remove ourselves from people and places that would cause us to disobey God and to live in the moral excesses in which this world takes such inordinate pleasure.
We must believe the messenger and their message of forsaking sin and turning to Jesus Christ to live as he commands.
Just as Lot’s family believed and left Sodom for good, we are to give up our sinful lifestyle and follow the teaching of Jesus Christ as we – in our hearts and minds – rid ourselves of earthly pleasures and preoccupations to follow instead – ie live – as Jesus would have us live.
As we obey the teaching of Jesus Christ in our lives, we move further and further away from the lifestyle of lust and pleasure which this world worships, and we come closer and closer to the place of safety far from gthe place where sin deceives us and entraps us in a false view of this life and a dangerous, debilitating, rebellious lifestyle.
God will Judge this world’s ways one day. We must heed that central fact about our future – not ignore it !
As Peter wrote, we must now live for God – not Self.
Christianity 