Can good come out of that which is bad? Can beauty shine forth out of that which is ugly? Is there a mercy lying behind messiness? In this message, we shall see how a messy situation becomes an unbelievable mercy-in-action situation, even a world-changing situation. We shall behold how a broken family is used to bring forth a beloved family that will last forever. We trust that God will allow us to see how His glorious mind overshadows mindless human actions.

Good morning This morning we get a picture of ourselves and we get another picture of Jesus amen That's what the preaching of the Word of God entails doesn't it Let's open in a word of prayer this morning. Father God in heaven, we praise you, Father, for your great redemption that you bring through Jesus Christ our Lord. What a blessing, Father, that you saw us in our lost estate, you had pity upon us, and you sent your son as a savior. We praise you, Father, this morning that you have come and you have saved us. Father, we pray for your salvation to extend to others and to the ends of this earth as your kingdom comes and as your will is done on earth as it is in heaven.

We pray for this today in Jesus name. Amen. Please turn with me to Genesis chapter 19. Genesis chapter 19, I'd like to read from verse 29 down through verse 38. Let's all stand together as we read the Word of God.

This morning, shall we? And it came to pass when God destroyed the cities of the plain that God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow when he overthrew the cities in which Lot had dwelt. Then lot went up out of zor and dwelt in the mountains and his two daughters were with him For he was afraid to dwell in zor and he and his daughters dwelt in a cave Now the firstborn said to the younger our father is old And there is no man on the earth to come Into us as in the custom of all the earth Come let us make our father drink wine and we will lie with him that we may preserve the lineage of our father So they made their father drink wine that night and the firstborn went in and lay with her father and he did not know when she lay down or when she arose. It happened on the next day that the firstborn said to the younger, indeed, I lay with my father last night, let us make him drink wine tonight also and you go in and lie with him that we may preserve the lineage of our father.

Then they made their father drink wine that night also and the younger arose and lay with him and he did not know when she lay down or when she arose. Thus both the daughters of Lot were with child by their father, the firstborn bore a son and called his name Moab. He is the father of the Moabites to this day. And the younger, she also bore a son and called his name Ben-Ami. He is the father of the people of Ammon to this day.

And all of God's people said, amen. Please be seated. Well, I know this is an unusual text that was assigned to me by brother Scott Brown. I love you, Scott, wherever you are this morning. But this is so apropos to our world.

I remember signing up for executive director of Christian Home Educators of Colorado. I led the home schoolers in my state for a number of years. This was 22 years ago that I left the corporate world and joined Christian Home Educators of Colorado as their director. And I was so enamored by home education thinking that this was the salvation of America. There was something about home education that seemed to me to be a panacea or some kind of a cure-all or something beautiful that God might use to save our nation or to provide something of a reformation in the church, a reformation in the family as well as a reformation in the church.

And so I was very excited about all of this. And yet As the years went by, I think reality set in and I found that at least in some cases, homeschooling would make things worse for a number of reasons. One is the true state of our hearts are revealed oftentimes in relationship. You bring your children home, you uncover the sofas, and you bring your children into the home environment, and you begin to see the real you and the real them as you come into close relationship. I was a nice guy until I tried to homeschool my son.

I taught in Christian schools. I was a pastor. I was a nice guy, you know. I never lost my cool when I was teaching or when I was working with kids in Christian schools in the 1980s and 1990s, and yet, wow, I'm trying to teach my son trinomials and I'm getting red in the face with him and I came to the realization that, you know, relationships draw out those things that are within you. And so you don't understand your own heart until you come into relationship, that is it works in the marriage as well as in the homeschooling environment.

But then also there is what I would call the externalisms that seem to be magnified oftentimes in the homeschooling movement in America, not just the home schooling movement but other aspects of American religiosity. And so, you know you do see in American Christianity, this is the reason why the highest porn download rates in America were in Utah or in Mississippi. Those are the states where pornography seemed to be the most accessed according to studies that were done a number of years ago and there shouldn't be any question as to why this is the case. There is a tendency amongst humans, amongst all of us, to whitewash the hypocrisy. And at points, as I began to get to know home schoolers and homeschooling families, I was appalled, I was shocked to discover that the nicest of the nicest turned out not to be so nice.

And to put it delicately, some of these families turned out to be more like the household of Lot than the household of Stephanas, who were addicted to the ministry of the saints. So as the facades came down, the honest stories began to reveal themselves. So this is what we see here in the story. The lot story is shocking to us. The story of drunkenness and incest.

And it gives the real story of us, the human heart. Who Are we? What do we look like? What's the real us? And so God strips back the facades, and this of course is what the teaching of Christ brings as well in the New Testament as Jesus pulls the facades down.

And he doesn't allow for us to to cover up our sins Matthew 5 and 6 and Matthew 15 and Matthew 23 and throughout the Gospels we see that our Lord is constantly revealing the true state of the human heart. He doesn't allow for us for a moment to cover up, but there it is in full color in front of everybody. All the skeletons are out of the closet now. So there are these tremendous pictures of the brokenness that makes up our world in the Old Testament. But let me draw five lessons this morning from the story of Lot.

Five lessons from the story of Lot beginning with verse 29, it came to pass when God destroyed the cities of the plain that God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow when he overthrew the cities in which Lot had dwelt. Here's the first point in the story of Lot And that is God's temporal judgments are real and He really does judge the world. We see this both temporally and we know that He has promised the final judgment as well. Temporal judgments remind us of the final judgments that is to come. And it is important for us to see this in world history.

We present our world history curriculum, whether it be Epoch, the rise and fall of the West for the 12th grade or American God's providence, we want to be sure that our chapters are headed by a reminder that these are God's mercies and these are God's judgments. World War I and World War II are not just random events that are caused by man. No, no. The ultimate cause is God. So let's be sure that we see the providential hand of God and we're teaching our children that this is God's hand upon the nations and the 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 million people slaughtered is the work of God in bringing a judgment upon the nations.

This is how we teach history to our children and God's temporal judgments are upon us as well. This is the way we're to see 2020. As I see it, 2019 was the year of pride that we'd never ever experienced so much pride in the world until you reached 2019. This was the 50th anniversary of the pride marches and so a hundred million people crowded out into the streets and they were shaking their fists in the face of almighty God in June, July and August of 2019. And you remember our Generations broadcast where we dedicated a broadcast in July of 2019.

We were quizzing the children. We asked them the question, what comes after pride? What comes after the Hottie Spirit, children? What is it that comes after pride? We drove it home.

What comes after 2019 we asked. 2020, that's what the children said. And then we asked again, what comes after pride? And they said, the fall. The fall comes after pride.

Indeed, the fall of civilizations come after pride. And so the year after a hundred million people crowded the streets of the largest cities in America and across the whole world, especially in the Western world, shaking their fist in the face of Almighty God, what comes after? Pride. The fall, destruction of a worldwide economy, that's what happens. Of course God will come.

Of course Jesus Christ is on the throne. And he holds us to tighter accounts than those Old Testament days in which he winked at their ignorance. But now commands every man, everywhere, in Athens, in New York, everywhere around the world, to repent for he's assigned judgment to his man his son who has risen from the dead amen brothers and sisters the historical reality of it all is that Christ is on the throne. This is the rubric through which we must interpret all of history. That's why we're going to have 12 years of curriculum that puts Jesus Christ on the throne, taking Asia for Jesus, taking Africa for Jesus, taking the world for Jesus.

Christ is on the throne, and His kingdom is moving forward. And He's bringing His enemies under His footstool. Now this is the way to see history. It doesn't matter if you're a pre-mill or a mill or a post-mill. You've got to see Jesus in this rubric.

That he is on the throne. He's risen from the dead. He is ruling. He rules far above all principles and powers. He's active.

He is the living God, working, active, bringing all things under His own feet. Indeed, Hebrews 12 and verse 25, see that you Do not refuse Him who speaks. Listen to Him. You've only got one chance left. This is it.

He speaks still. Receive His words. If they did not escape that, refused him who spoke on the earth, that is in the Old Testament days, much more shall we not escape if we turn away from him who speaks from heaven, whose voice then shook the earth, but now he is promised, saying, yet once more I shake Not only the earth but also the heaven. Now this, yes, once more indicates the removal of those things that are being shaken as of the things that are made, that the things which cannot be shaken may remain, which is what? Which is the church of Jesus Christ.

When the foundations are destroyed, what do the righteous do? When the foundations are destroyed. So the answer is very simple. Go to church. Why?

Because the next verse says what? God is in his holy temple. So when the foundations are destroyed, if there was ever a time where you should not home church, if there was ever a time When you should put your energies into the church of Jesus Christ. Submitting to the elders and submitting to one another in the fear of God. If there was ever a time When the foundations are destroyed, what do the righteous do?

God is in his holy temple, go to church. You know, judgment is imminent on our world, Especially the Western world. It is right there. I was just reading Billy Graham's comment nine years ago. Before he died.

I like to read, I don't always appreciate everything that some of these men of God has done in their careers. But then go towards the end of their lives and read what they said. Now listen to this. My wife Ruth was reading the draft of a book I was writing when she finished a section describing the terrible downward spiral of our nation's moral standards and the idolatry of worshiping false gods such as technology and sex, she startled me by exclaiming, if God doesn't punish America, He'll have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah. That's Billy Graham, nine years ago.

By the way, I put an entire chapter of some 40 pages of the prophets. Those men of God from the 1800s and 1900s that said, this thing's going down. And they said it 50 years ago 60 years ago 80 years ago 90 years ago and and they saw it as imminent they saw it as coming they thought just right here but nowadays it seems to me that people are asleep and they don't realize it's happening right now this is it The words of the prophets are coming to pass. And now I go back to Francis Schaeffer. I go back to A.A.

Hodge and others from the 19th century. But these guys understood that it was going to happen. They saw it happening and now friends it's all coming to pass right now just about every curse contained in Deuteronomy 28 is being fulfilled in the United States. Ten trillion dollars of quantitative easing in just the last two years. The destruction of the family, the homosexualization of children, the consuming of placentas.

I know that's a minor thing, but in my state, the homeschooling, home birth organizations are almost entirely consumed with the consumption of placentas and on and on and on it goes. The curses that are listed in Deuteronomy 28 my friends are coming to pass in the present day. Diseases proliferating. These immune system diseases all over the place, economic catastrophe, the insanity. The insanity is outrageous.

Psychotropic drugs, what, 20 times the use of, since the 1990s, this despair deaths are now again increased by 20-fold since the 1970s. Despair deaths, and that's by percentage. Unbelievable what's going on is this judgment is already here. So God's temporal judgment is real, that's number one, he judges the world. And then number two, here's the second point, he preserves cultures because of Christian influence in a culture.

And now that's really the story of this great epoch of the last 2, 000 years. It's incredible what happened in the preservation of Western society by Christian influence. Again, infanticide abortion pretty much eliminated for those first 1, 000 years or so until, well, 1973. But if there had been ten righteous in Sodom, God would not have destroyed the city. But alas, lots of evangelization program really didn't kick in.

And he didn't even reach his own children, you know that. We read that from the text. He didn't reach his own wife either. And now let's apply it to ourselves. Do Christians have influence upon the United States?

I can see how Christians have some influence in some localized areas. So we see opportunities in some very, very small local areas. So there's a localization of the salt. So we see that, but not on the macro, no way on the macro. The Christian influence upon the entire culture has been obliterated in our culture, my friends.

We're basically lost in our present day. Christians have no influence on the U.S. Supreme Court. It's too late for the Supreme Court. It's too late.

Judge Neil Gorsuch and Judge John Roberts did the wrong thing with Brostock, submitting Christian organizations to persecution. So Roberts, Gorsuch, Gorsuch appointed by a president that was supposed to be a good president, I guess, But everybody knew he attended the most liberal church in Boulder, Colorado. Everybody knew that. We knew what he would do. We knew that he was pro-homosexual.

We knew that he would persecute Christians. We all knew that. And sure enough, he did in 2020. So yes, Christians have no substantial influence upon the macro culture. That's just the facts.

And when the CCCU went for the Utah Compromise, same thing. The salt had lost its savor at the point at which they would throw the Christian businessmen under the bus, like the baker in Denver or the flower shop in Washington. They would do that. That's what the Christian colleges would do. The CCCU representing about 95 to 99% of the Christian colleges in America, and these Christian colleges all beholden to Title IX because they've been hooked into the government worldview and the government's funding and the government's control of their schools, this has been the deal for 99% of Christian colleges.

And now they went for the Utah Compromise in which they would throw Christian businessmen under the bus in order to preserve their Title IX exemption. Friends, this is where the salt has lost its savor. This is 99% of evangelicalism. And there is no statistically significant difference between the Christian evangelical women that use the high-efficiency birth control, the IUDs, killing 67% of the children conceived. And by the way, these are respected studies that have been done on the number of babies killed per woman on the IUD per year.

And as far as I know, there's only one denomination in America that has a resolution against the other 6.75 million abortions in America. Oh yeah, everybody says, oh we don't want the bloody stuff. But the single cell child, the little ones, the real little ones, 6.75 million of them and the Southern Baptist, the PCA, let them just be killed by the millions across this country. And as far as I know, only one small denomination, our denomination, the CPC, has a resolution calling for the obliteration of the use of these abortifacients among Christian peoples and encouraging other denominations to do the same. But I can't see that there's any denomination remotely interested in preserving human life.

It's hypocrisy, my friends. The salt has lost its savor. The salt has lost its savor. There's no influence to speak of in the macro culture among the ruling denominations in America against the antithesis. I'm not talking about compromise on how much water to use in a baptism.

I'm talking about the slaughter of seven million babies, all right? The salt has lost its savor. Lot could not preserve Sodom. And I don't think the American church is even close to being able to preserve American society from the judgment of God. I just don't think it's possible at this point.

But here's the good news, number three. Here's the third point in the third lesson in the life of Lot. God is merciful. Amazing. God saves Lot and his family.

God knew the hearts of these people and yet he offered his temporal salvation to Lot and his family. Lot escapes Sodom. In fact it wasn't easy to pull him out. It seemed like there was a little hesitation on the part of Lot but there the angels went in. They pulled Lot and his family out of Sodom and praise God, he is in the business of saving us.

And here, one more thing, saving families. Don't miss the pattern of God's love for us and for our children, for our families. It's a beautiful thing throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament. God is offering covenant blessings to families. He provided for the salvation for Noah and his family.

We see that not just Noah but his family, his sons, his daughters-in-law, and his wife, and then Lot and his family here, and Abraham and his family. These were temporal salvation, special opportunities for the access to his word and to escape temporal judgments. And in the New Testament also, it's very interesting that we see throughout the book of Acts these household groups of people fearing God together, believing together, being baptized together. We see this family integration in the work of the covenant that God does in Old Testament, New Testament. People have asked me, do you really think there's much of a difference between God treating households a certain way in the Old Testament and God treating households a certain way in the New Testament?

I think it's about the same. I just don't see a whole bunch of difference there and I realize some do and I respect the differences but I just don't. I think God loves our households and He's doing amazing things for households. In the individuated age of the last 200 years since Jean-Jacques Rousseau and others, I can see how philosophy has infected us to the point where we individuate everybody. And so I understand that, but God still loves households.

God still shows his mercy on households. God still promises to our children, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit of God. I think these are beautiful things and I think we should claim these promises. But here number four, number four, apostasy is still a reality. God is merciful, God saves household, but apostasy still a reality.

In the process of saving families, one is lost and then three are lost or more. God still refers to righteous lot. So evidently, lot is still elect. God is mercy has saved the man. But we see the apostasy of his wife, she looks back at Sodom as it's smoking, and she turns into a pillar of salt.

I think it's extraordinary that she is looking back at the judgment of God, the fire and brimstone coming down upon this city. And she looks back longingly at all of this in the face of the judgment of God. Isn't that extraordinary? I mean, think about it. The fire and brimstone is destroying the cities and the plain and she is enamored by the world even though the world is at that very moment under the judgment of God.

Does that tell you where her heart is? That's why our Lord reminds us to remember Lot's wife. Now the real problem is she loved the world. Take a look at 1 John chapter 2 Verses 15, 16 and 17. First John 2, 15, do not love the world or the things in the world.

If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, not of the Father, but is of the world. And here's the point, guys, and this is the way it works. Temporally as well as eternally. This is Both and.

This is what happens to the world. The world is passing away with its lust thereof, but he who does the will of God abides forever. This principle is always the case. The world is always in the process of passing away with its sexual perversions, its burnout, its economic, social burnout. It's always in the process of passing away, but he who does the will of God abides forever.

So what does it mean to love the world? Let me run through this just a little bit with you because I think this is important. Lot's wife loved the world and so did the girls. They loved the world. To love something, to love the world is to appreciate it on the basis of what it offers us.

To render high regard to something. To be unwilling to part with something. To rest contented and satisfied in that object. And to love the world is to love that which God vomits out. It's to love that which God hates.

If one loves the world, the love of The Father is not in him. The values, the things that we're drawn to, the loves that we have towards God and towards his people and towards his church. Jesus loves his church. People who are always complaining about the hypocrites in the church and all of these terrible things about the church. They don't love the church.

They don't love the body. That's a problem. You recognize that right away with people. They don't love the things God loves. They don't love the church.

But to be loving the world. I remember on a secular blog one time seeing a pastor, this is a reformed pastor on a blog, and it was a secular news source in which he was, I guess he had some editorial, and down the sides of this news site had all these pictures of immodestly dressed women. You know, just the whole worldly, lustful, everything down the sides. And right there in the blog, he's criticizing a Christian brother. Now see, this is just the opposite of where we should be.

We should be loving the brother and hating the world. Not hating the brother and loving the world. You see what I'm saying? And I think it's very clear, it should be very clear to us who It is that loves God. Where does the love of God dwell?

It dwells in the one who loves God and loves the things that God loves and hates the thing that God hates. The world's values are all here in this life. Your best life here now. That's what the world's all about. The pilgrims walking through Vanity Fair, see the trinkets, you know, everything that's being advertised through, you know, the magazines and through the movies and the TV thing and it is all a pump and the wonderful little baubles the world presents and the pilgrims just ignored it.

And that's why they were crucified. That's why they're burned at the stake at Vanity Fair. That's why it happened because the world didn't appreciate the fact that they didn't appreciate all of these amazing values that they have considered to be so important. And they said, no, we don't buy any of your stuff. We buy the truth.

The world's about pride, about boasting, commendations, flattering, stardom. The world offers power and fame and competitions. That's the big thing about the world. The world is all about competitions. There's always this competition.

Who gets to be at the top? The Olympics and all these sports events and all these things are about the competitions and making it to the top and receiving as much praise and worship from all the masses that you can possibly collect for yourself. That's what the world is about, my friends. That's their value. The world seeks power and fame for authors, speakers, academics, pastors, entertainers, athletes, businessmen, politicians, and Facebook addicts.

The world is proud of its intelligence, its wealth, its physical appearance, its power, its sexual prowess, its ability to spit a watermelon seed 120 feet or whatever. I know that's stupid but it's all stupid. Amen? It's all stupid. It's like, you know, Some guy kicks a field goal 45 feet.

God made the galaxies, get over it, you know. It's a religion of self-glorification, that's what it is, That's what the world is about. It exalts the works of man. It even exalts in prayers and acts of faith or preaching and moving speeches. It's always an over-concern with self.

The world is always concerned with self, isn't it? How many of you like the self God don't raise your hand The self God always trying to get the preeminence in our lives. You know what I'm saying I mean that self God is just I just give me more you know give me more That's what the self God's always crying out for like that Leech right if self is not propped up with the praise of man it starts to pout It develops a bad attitude for the day. You know somebody didn't give me a nice little kudos Oh, it's on I'm gonna be all upset all day long right as a self God isn't it The world's always hungering and thirsting after the praise of men Complete dependence on it like the most powerful drug in the world and that is the most powerful drug in the world is not cocaine And it's not money The most powerful drug in the world is kudos If others accused us of wrong self is offended self doesn't want to be humble and confess wrong. See, the world is always interested in confessing other people's sins, institutional sins.

That's CNN, political sins. That's Fox News, scandalous sins. Of others, especially Christians, if it's anything about the Duggars, you know, the world just gets excited about those stories. That's what this the world is all about. Confess everybody else's sins.

That's what the world likes, not mine. And then academic pride is perhaps the most insidious, baffling others with a more extensive vocabulary, the use of technical ease, the use of sarcasm, satire, high cleverness, the pride of having mastered some great intellectual subject The appreciation of the turn of a phrase or a creative quip but an unwillingness to really be humbled by its true meaning Boy, isn't that the world Isn't that what the world is all about? That's why we have to be careful with certain forms of classical education and such, right? The pride in the world is everywhere. And we as Christians need to be looking out for it.

Parents are proud of their children, Republicans are proud of America, And Democrats are proud of homosexuality. They're all proud. They're just proud of different things. So there's no secret about it, my friends. The world will tell you that they're about pride.

People stand up in their graduation ceremonies, I'm so proud of my son, I'm so proud of my daughter. I mean this is what they do, this is what the whole world does, we as Christians are sometimes pulled into these things, but brothers and sisters know it ought not to be the case for us. Well, there's so much more. Now we can say, you know, I'm so thankful, I'm so blessed, and God is so good, and God has given my daughter some blessings and gifts and things. You know, we say that kind of stuff, but come on, the word proud is a sin.

That's the world. That's what the world's all about. We don't do that as Christians. The world is also about the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes. There's no restraint, no qualms to the empowering of the lust of the flesh.

What is the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes? It's a strong, nagging desire, Going after that which God has forbidden It's a raging discontentment in the hearts of men a lack of gratitude for what God has already given to us It's a tendency to idolize the gift rather than to a Respect reverence and worship and to render Thanksgiving to the giver Lust usually involves a drawing into idolatry covetousness Adultery like the horse leech the flesh is never satisfied never satisfied with marriage not satisfied sexual orientation not satisfied There's gender not satisfied with looks or body shape not satisfied That's income always grasping grasping grasping Lusting lusting lusting after this or that That is the unconverted heart, brothers and sisters. That's it. And nothing characterizes the world, I think, as much as the film industry. The film industry is, I think, the very peak of Vanity Fair.

That's it. That's its greatest accomplishment. That's its greatest sales pitch of all. A Christian simply cannot just sit there passively watching a Hollywood movie without finding not just one instance of a sex scene but a thousand instances of the worldly stuff. Not just in the sex scenes and not just an arrogant blasphemous use of the holy name of God, but you'll see it in the facial expressions, the dress, the turn of the phrase, and the dialogue.

That's where you see it, you see it everywhere. It's not just, oh, there was this one scene, I'm so glad that I was able to filter that out. No, It's a thousand problems in these films It's thick with it. It's everywhere. It's throughout it and the sanctified heart and mind is it just that's not me That's not what I buy we buy the truth Lot's wife may have turned back to Sodom, but the Christian says, no, there's nothing there for me.

Christians do not love the world, nor the things that are in the world. Look at Luke 17 in verse 31. This is where our Lord brings out this admonition So let me just read it for a second because I think this applies very much to our entire Christian life listen to the verse itself Luke 17 31 in that day he who is on the house top And his goods are in the house. Let him not come down to take them away And likewise the one who is in the field let him not turn back remember lots wife. There it is Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it and whoever loses life will preserve it What he's saying I think here is okay Well, you can interpret this as as what was going on in Matthew 24 What's happening at the end of the world or during the Great Tribulation or whatever it is?

But here's what our Lord is saying. He's saying this is an emergency But life is an emergency Amen Amen this is an emergency guys We are on the brink of eternity here. We are tipping over into the final judgments. This is an emergency. We we are in a state of sin and misery.

Things are not going well for us. This world is going to hell. We we are we are in emergency situation. We We we are we are dropping down into the deep waters of the Northern Seas in in waves 70 feet high, 33 degree water and this is an emergency. Life is an emergency.

And and and and and he says, you gotta run for your life. Run for your life. Run out of the city of destruction. Run for your life, run! Run man, run, run!

Go, go, run to heaven. Run towards the kingdom of heaven. Not finding utopia here. You still trying to turn this place into heaven? Three of the most important words in the English language.

This ain't heaven. We aren't on a cruise ship, we're on a battleship. And Everybody's got COVID and half the crew is lost and people are throwing up on the deck. It's not a cruise ship. Wouldn't be a good time to remember we're not on a cruise ship.

It's a battleship and this is not the end goal. We're going to heaven. Well, the lesson here is that we are being tested in these emergencies and our ultimate commitments are being tested. Are we grabbing for everything on the earth? Are we going back to Sodom and grabbing a few things?

What are the values? The things that you grab if, you know, we have, I have a little bag that I keep just in case Denver gets nuked or whatever. You know, just in case you just gotta run. I don't know, maybe we had a fire or something, you know. Anybody else have a bag where you have like your grandpa's Bible in it or something?

I'm it? Oh, there's a lady back there. Anyway, I have this bag. I got my grandpa's Bible in it and a few other things. And so you have this bag, you're just gonna grab the bag and you're gonna run, right?

So that's what we're talking about here more in a spiritual sense, but we're ready to go And we don't have anything here we need to grab. Remember Lot's wife? There's nothing back in Sodom we need. We just run, we go, we leave. Well brothers and sisters, I mean in a temporal sense, my contention in this book I worked on last year, I worked on it all year, you know, 700 pages on the rise and fall of the West, we are dealing with a catastrophe even more significant than the fall of Rome in A.D.

475. I believe that. I believe that's where we are right now. And I believe that Christians need a little bit of an explanation, an apology, a city of God sort of thing in which we understand whose fault it is and what happened and why the Christian church has failed and all the rest. We need to know where we are.

We need to be the men of Ishikar who understand the times so that what? We need to understand the times so that what? So that we will know what to do. That's the way the rest of the verse goes. So it's very important that we have visionary understandings of the times, of the judgments that are visiting us right now.

So we as Christians will know what to do. But here's the most important thing to do in this, to get out of Sodom and to leave all the values behind? It's my contention really that the West is spending its last 10 trillion dollars of quantitative easing really ultimately on things like psychotropic drugs and the opiates. That's pretty much it. The most expensive band-aids they can find and the most extensive escapist modes that have ever been known to man, they're going to be in the games while Rome burns, Absolutely, but the games are a 60 billion dollar industry right now.

It's outrageous. It's huge. It's way, way, way bigger than Hollywood. No, no, we're looking at the most expensive escape modes to shield us from a reality that man has ever seen because we're looking at a widespread suicide. It's a suicide that's occurring in a slow way.

It happens through the opioids. It happens through psychotropics. It happens through the suicidal approach that humans are taking to life. It happens through the suicide of abortion. It happens through the suicide of so many other things.

As civilizations are collapsing around us, we're seeing socioeconomic systems coming down, political states, far, far more disunity in America than anything we've seen in the history of the nation, with maybe the exception of 1860. The emotional states, billions of people collapsing, sexual nihilism, gender dysphoria. We're in the very last stages of a dying society, friends. The smoke is rising from what used to be Western civilization. The world is literally on fire right now.

There isn't much left psychologically, emotionally, socially, culturally. The suicide is almost complete like right now. But here's my point. Incredibly, there are still kids raised in Christian homes looking back at the world with longing eyes they still go to the theater and watch the very last of some of the most dysphoria most important dysphoria and the most nihilistic films that I think have ever been created, ever, in the history of the world. They are joining the suicide.

They're somehow embracing the world. They're looking back at the smoking Sodom and they're finding something there. You know, a Christian young man told me Recently, he was raised in a Christian home, he read my book Apostate, he says, it's hard, man, I really like, I really like the values of the Greeks. I really like the categories and the literature of the world. I just like it, It draws me in.

I just have to tell you I like it. Your book bothered me. In fact, one young man in Washington State read my book, Apostate, and he thanked me for the book. And he said, well, here's what happened. About four years ago, you rolled this book into our homeschool community in Washington and I took it home, a couple other guys did.

We didn't like it. We hated your book. Just hated it because we were into all the classics. We were into all the humanist writings, the humanist values of the day. And so it was all the young men in our Reformed Baptist Church, the pastor's son, all these young men, we were in a club of young men who enjoyed the great literature.

And he said, well, let me say this. Thank you for your book. I read it again. And I wanna tell you that all those young men have walked away from the faith, the pastor's son included. But thank you for the apostate in the book that warned me about the attractions of the world.

And friends, I really think there's going to be a fairly significant number of people that are looking back at Sodom. They're looking back at the world. And they're not realizing the sharp antithesis between the values, the categories, the ethical categories of Aristotle and Plato and those of Christ. And they try to blend it through a natural law synthesis and it's deadly, it's deadly. Sometimes they wander back to Rome, sometimes back to the Orthodox, but they always want to blend it and they don't want to distinguish between God's revealed word and the autonomous thinking of the Greeks, the transcendentalists, the classic writers of the 19th century, Shakespeare and all the others.

There is a sharp line of antithesis between these things. And friends, We need to call our brothers and sisters to get out of the world. Be separate. Well, Lot's two remaining daughters sunk into a sin comparable to the sin of Sodom. That's the sad news of this passage, isn't it?

The sin of incest which is equal to the sin of homosexuality. They're equally egregious sins recorded for us in 1 Corinthians 5 and 6, both. It's interesting that 1 Corinthians 5 deals with the sexual immorality of incest, chapter 6 deals with the problem of homosexuality. But here, those who identify as homosexual will not inherit the kingdom of God. I don't know how the revoiced people or anybody else can get around that.

I just don't understand. How do you get around that? If you identify as homosexual and you can't save yourself such as I, if you can't say that, how in the world is this person gonna inherit the kingdom of God? We are new creatures in Christ, old things are passed away, behold all things are becoming new, isn't it? Isn't that the way it is?

We have a new identity, we have a new orientation, we have a new heart. So what is this looking back at Sodom and identifying with Sodom? I don't understand how that makes it in the Christian church. But let's move on to number five. Number five, we still see that Lot is playing a part in God's plan of redemption.

And this is the good news. Let's get back into the good news now. By God's grace, Lot was a righteous man, but there's no blessing of faith continuity in his generation. His physical seed continued, and that's what his daughters wanted, but it continued by way of apostasy and unbelief. But millions upon millions of his seed would go to hell over the following two thousand years.

Very sad, except for one woman, a daughter of Moab, that is Ruth, who was adopted into the family of God and became the great grandmother of David. What a beautiful story how God takes the shambles and the apostasy and the compromises and the brokenness of this family and yet by his mercy he brings them back in via Ruth and then Lot plays this part in God's plan of redemption, the heritage of Christ, the family tree mentioned in Matthew chapter 1. It's interesting how God goes back and mentions some of these characters. Judah's incest produced Perez and David's wife Bathsheba bore Nathan and so we're reminded of Bathsheba. We're reminded of Judah's sin.

We're reminded of Lot's sin in the testimony to the genealogy of our Lord Jesus Christ in chapter 1 of Matthew. All glory to God. All glory to God, brothers and sisters. From the dysfunctionality of Lot's incest, Judah's incest, and David's adultery with Bathsheba comes the seed, and that is Jesus. And he enters into that lineage to save the dysfunctional, sinful, wicked people who made up that lineage from their sins.

It's a broken world into which our Lord Jesus Christ entered in order that He might redeem a broken world and create a new person, a new man, a new lineage, And that is the lineage of Jesus of which we are the ones who play the part. Well, let me wrap up. When Christ came, He did bring a tremendous transformation over the entire world. And he redeemed family. If you look at the state of the Romans and the Greeks, I bring out some of those stories of the degradation that was celebrated by Nero and the Romans and the Greeks and such in this little book, but it's interesting that it didn't take many years before the gospel of Jesus Christ penetrated.

Polygamy was gone, incest gone, homosexuality was gone. It wasn't even mentioned. It was hardly an issue until the Renaissance and Italians brought it back in, in the 1300s, but it was pretty much gone. I mean, for a thousand years, there was so much influence, there was so much transformation of entire cultures, and again, let's not minimize the work of Jesus. When I put together this little book for ninth grade called Taking the World for Jesus, on the back of it I had The World Will Never Be the Same.

And we joint published it with another evangelical publisher. And one of the editors came back to me and said, I think we want to take that off because the world's getting bad and we don't think that Jesus is going to have much influence on the future. And so I said, no, that stays. The world will never be the same. And I think, brothers and sisters, that's the takeaway.

That's the thing we've got to remember. I was sitting in a restaurant last night with a brother and I looked around, and I'm sure this is a liberal area, somebody told me it is, but I looked around and said, this wouldn't happen without Jesus. You know, We're enjoying some wonderful food and we see the cultural influences of Christ upon the world and our world and not just our world, but you fly around the world and you see that already the Western world has shared missionaries around the entire globe. There's been a ripple effect of cultural influences upon the whole world and it's not... Now granted, America is in apostasy, the western world is in apostasy, I get that, but Jesus has already accomplished amazing things.

Give your children the view of 2, 000 years of the work of Christ, I think historically we need to give Him the credit, the honor for what He's already done. Let's not shortchange Him on that. Amen. Let's be sure that Christ gets the glory for what he has already accomplished. And in our experience, we're seeing this in our own home, in our own family, in our own church, in which Jesus comes and restores the years the locusts have eaten.

A brother, a drug dealer, A guy who was raised on way to the other side of the tracks without a father from a Hispanic background comes into our church and he gets saved in a radical way. I baptized him and for the last three years I'm in his home on a weekly basis. For three years I'm with this brother in Christ. He's got six kids and he's discipling them in the word of God as they sit in the house and they walk. Some people say, oh, it's impossible for a drug dealer to homeschool and home disciple his kids, join the rest of the goody two shoes.

No, that's all of us, brothers and sisters. That's all of us. Amen? We're all drug dealers. We're all adulterers.

We're all the prostitutes at Jesus' feet. But He cleanses us. He transforms us. He gives us a new motive in our hearts. And then we begin to teach our children about the God we love.

And this young man's passionate about Jesus and he wants to share Jesus with his children every day as he sits in the house, as he walks by the way. I have pictures I can show you of him opening up the Word of God with six kids around his table. If any of you want proof, I can show it to you on my cell phone afterwards. You just come up to me, I have my cell phone, my bag, I'll show you the picture of this guy opening up the Word of God. This is amazing.

This is transforming. We should give Jesus all the glory and the praise. We forget these amazing stories. We take them for granted after about five years, but never, friends. How long did he talk about the resurrection of Lazarus?

How long did he talk about Lazarus? Did he ever forget like three years later, yeah, I think something happened to me three years ago, but I forgot all about it. No! No, no, no. He was dead for four days.

He got Jesus came, raised him from the dead. He testified to the power of Jesus for the rest of his life. And That's what we need to be doing. I love the story of Hawaii and so many great stories. Fiji is amazing, but Hawaii as well.

Just extraordinary. Five years after the gospel first penetrated that island. Here's what we read. Five years after in 1825. There they were in Lahaina over Maui, okay?

Five years, they've been in paganism for what? Three thousand years, five years into it. Incredible. Here's what we read. I stepped out, missionary says, in the morning and the evening and in 50 little grass huts in the neighborhood of Lahaina, we heard the Psalms of Jesus, we heard the scriptures read by these pagan folks, morning and evening worship.

And they didn't even have the NCFIC or the Church family love organization, whatever it is. I'm sorry brother, it's a great organization. But they didn't have it, you know, they have any of that. All they had was the Holy Spirit of God. Transforming lives.

Brothers and sisters, we have a great opportunity. The Church of Christ will shine in this age. While the world is euthanizing 80 million baby boomers, the churches and our families will be adopting the elderly and caring for their aging parents and grandparents. Hundreds of thousands of churches are shedding social security and changing their Sunday school rooms into elderly care facilities and deacons are adding bedrooms into their homes for the elderly by the year 2040. Because make no mistake about it, There will be tens of millions of euthanasia's across this country.

While the world are killing 67% of their babies by IUD and the surgical abortions the church is adopting. While the world is spending their great grandchildren to debt, We are leaving an inheritance for our children's children. While the world is full of lost boys, prisons filled up with fatherless, marriages, economies, civilizations, a total disaster because 55% of these little boys and girls are born without fathers. The Christian church is filling up with men who know they are loved by the Father and share the love of the Father with their own sons and daughters, investing hundreds of hours into discipleship instead of watching sports. Discipling their boys and girls as they sit in the house, as they walk by the way, as they rise up as they lay down.

Why? Because they'll tell you, Jesus loved me and gave himself for me. They'll tell you, the Father has loved me with an everlasting love. And now I share this love with you, my children. And mentorships and discipleship will restore character and economy in the years to come.

There will be a radical transition between the world and the transformed church. Real sacrificial Christ-like love will shine in our churches against the broken relationships, the abortion, the murder, the hatred, the hopeless divorces and addictions and idolatries that characterize a lost and dying world and the contrast will be so abrupt It will be light and darkness There won't be the hypocrisies there will be the real church more so some hypocrisy. Yes, but the more church real really shining in contrast to the loveless, hate-filled, abortion-filled, IUD-filled world. Such a contrast. A supernatural love.

A Christ-like love. Where the family and the church are more known by love than they would be by divorce and Broken relationships with the children and church splits and all there is the church is a miracle of God The true church my friends is a walking talking transformed miracle of God. So we read in 1 Thessalonians 1, our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power. And in the Holy Spirit, much assurance, as you know, what kind of men we were among you for your sake how you turn to God from idols to serve the living and true God people who lived in idolatry for 2, 000 years Transformed by the gospel now waiting for a son from heaven whom he raised from the dead even Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come. Hallelujah.

Friends, this is no fake salvation. This is no superficial redemption. This is the redemption of Jesus. It's real. It's a God-sized redemption.

It's transforming. And nothing less will do than the true gospel of Jesus that really does transform It's a salvation that speaks to the power and the glory of an Almighty God Created the universe and that will be reflected in the creation of a new man The contrast between what was and what is is marked outstanding and worthy of all praise and glory and honor and blessing both now and forevermore for you shall go out with joy and be led out with peace. The mountains and the hills shall break forth into singing before you, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress tree. Instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle tree.

And it shall be to the Lord for a name for an everlasting sign that shall never be cut off forever and ever amen.