February 18, 2014

• DO YOU WANT CHRIST'S LOT OR LOT'S LOT?

  In the Bible Lot, we are told, is Abraham's nephew.   Abraham and Lot are both shepherds .  God so prospers both Abraham's and Lot's flocks that the two men split up and move their families and flocks in different directions.  Abraham stays on the open plain, and Lot moves to the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.

  The Holy Spirit, speaking through St. Peter says:

  "and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawless (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)." 2 Peter 2:7-9

  The whole story of Lot is found beginning in Genesis 13 and ends in Genesis 19.   Lot has always been held up as a righteous man, and I certainly believe the Holy Spirit when he calls Lot a righteous man.   Righteous or not the man lost everything he had when God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.   The great irony is that though Lot is righteous, everyone  in his life has been utterly corrupted by the sin sick culture of Sodom and Gomorrah.

  Lot is a righteous man, but in the end his wife is swept away by the very force which destroys Sodom and Gomorrah.   Lot's wife takes only a moment to look back and is destroyed.   Lot is left with his two daughters, and little else.   Being a righteous man means that Lot and his two daughters live happily ever after, right??   No, Lot's two daughters, on different nights, get their grief stricken father drunk and rape him.  Each young woman has a child.  One child is named Moab, and from him came the Moabites.  The other child born to Lot and one of his daughters is named Ben-Ammi, and is the father of the Ammonites.

  When Joshua leads the Israelites into the land God promised  Israel, the Moabites and Ammonites are two of Israel's enemies which cause horrific problems for centuries.   How could such evil come from a man as righteous as Lot??

  Lot stood for righteousness, but standing for righteousness and/or standing against evil doesn't defeat evil.   Jesus tells us, "In this world you will have trouble.   But take heart!  I have overcome the world."   John 16:33.    The problem for Lot is he didn't have Jesus to overcome the world.  All Lot could do was try to stand, and he did stand.  But standing against evil didn't change Lot's lot in life.   Remember Jesus taught that if  what he preached to Israel had been preached in Sodom and Gomorrah the two cities would not only have been saved from destruction in Abraham and Lot's day, but the cities would remain even to Jesus' own day.

  What the world needs is a Church with a savior that overcomes the world.   If Jesus doesn't overcome the world in and through the Church, then the world will overcome the Church.   The sad and horrible thing about the culture overcoming the righteous is that if the world overcomes the righteous, then the evil will arise out of our own houses to consume us.   If all  Christians can muster is a stand against sin then the same terrible lot left to Lot will also be our lot as well.

  No more politics.  No more laws made by mere men, like DOMA (Defense Of Marriage Act), which cannot change hearts, and cannot overcome the sin.   Let us repent of stooping to use "flesh" weapons!   The world's weapons are special interest activism, the creation of endless laws, marching and unrest in the streets.   Feminist activists, LGBT activists and pro-abortion activists  use flesh weapons.  Let the Church turn from empty activism which cannot change hearts or set people free from enslavement to sin!   Let us cry out to God and plead for grace and truth!  Let us cry out to God for true Holy Spirit revival,  and let us plead for God to revive the Church first and foremost.   Either Christ will overcome the world in and through us, or the world will overcome us, by infecting our own households with it's terrible and great evil.

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