In Genesis 19 we have the tragic account of the self-destruction of a family. Ruin did not come to Lot’s household overnight; and ruin will not come to your household overnight either. The decay occurs slowly and is often undetectable. For Lot it all started with the seemingly harmless choice of a location for the family tent. Let us learn from the destructive path Lot chose and seek God’s answers for avoiding a similar tragedy.

Well, let's pray together and ask for the Lord's grace and mercy to be upon us in this hour. Gracious God, we thank you for your goodness and your mercy. Lord, we thank you that you, having saved us, have not left us to find our way along. But Lord, Your Word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. And we ask that it would be that to us today, oh Lord, that your word would shine forth and illumine where we find ourselves today, that you would search us out and that your spirit would cause us to walk in that narrow way That alone leads to glory.

Thank you for this time. May Christ be honored and glorified in all that is said and all that is done. In His name we pray. Amen. What I would ask you to please turn with me to Genesis chapter 19.

Genesis chapter 19. I know a great portion of it was read last night, so we'll skip over some sections of it, but Look with me first in verse 1. Now the two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them, and he bowed himself with his face toward the ground. And he said, Here now, my lords, please turn into your servant's house and spend the night and wash your feet.

Then you may rise early and go on your way. And they said, No, but we will spend the night in the open square. But he insisted strongly, so they turned in to him and entered his house. Then he made them a feast and baked unleavened bread and they ate." Then if you'll skip down to verse 12, the angels were there in Lot's house through the night. You know the story of the men pounding on the door, the angels shutting that door.

Then we read in verse 12, Then the men said to Lot, Have you anyone else here, son-in-law, your sons, your daughters, and whomever you have in the city, take them out of this place, For we will destroy this place, because the outcry against them has grown great before the face of the Lord, and the Lord has sent us to destroy it." So Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who had married his daughters, and said, Get up, get out of this place, for the Lord will destroy this city. But to his sons-in-law, he seemed to be joking. When the morning dawned, the angels urged Lot to hurry, saying, Arise, take your wife and your two daughters who are here lest you be consumed in the punishment of the city. And while he lingered, the men took hold of his hand, his wife's hand, and the hands of his two daughters, the Lord being merciful to him, and they brought him out and set him outside the city. So it came to pass, when they had brought them outside, that he said, Escape for your life, do not look behind you, nor stay anywhere in the plain.

Escape to the mountains lest you be destroyed." Then Lot said to them, Please, no, my lords, indeed now your servant has found favor in your sight, and you have increased your mercy, which you have shown me by saving my life. But I cannot escape to the mountains, lest some evil overtake me and I die. See now, this city is near enough to flee to, and it is a little one. Please let me escape there. Is it not a little one?

And my soul shall live." And he said to him, See, I have favored you concerning this thing also, in that I will not overthrow this city for which you have spoken. Hurry, escape there, For I cannot do anything until you arrive there. Therefore the name of that city was called Zoar. The sun had risen upon the earth when Lot entered Zoar. Then The Lord rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah from the Lord out of the heavens.

So he overthrew those cities, all the plain, all the inhabitants of the city, and what grew on the ground. But his wife looked back behind him, and she became a pillar of salt. Then Lot went up out of Zoar and dwelt in the mountains, and his two daughters were with him, For he was afraid to dwell in Zoar, and he and his two 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 is 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 people of Ammon to this day. We have before us the sad account of the self-destruction of a family. The family of Lot, the nephew of the patriarch Abraham. Lot, a man described as righteous by Peter in his second epistle, chapter 2, a man whose very soul was tormented by the lawlessness all around him, a man who was successful in the eyes of the Lord, sitting in the very gate of the city.

And the book of Genesis provides us a window into the life of this man through which we witness how his family came to ruin. Ruin did not come to his household overnight. And ruin will most likely not come to your household overnight either. It is usually slow and most often undetectable without much searching. In the early stages, it's often like carbon monoxide, undetectable to the senses, slowly putting you into a sleep of death.

After all, do you really think Lot expected to lose his family? Where did it all go wrong? How did they get to that point? Well, as we see this family walk down this path of self-destruction, we need to ask ourselves some serious, heart-searching questions. And you men, especially as the God-appointed leaders of your family, please understand that the responsibility rests squarely upon your shoulders.

So here are the questions we will seek to consider in the time that is before us. First, where are you pitching your tent? Where are you pitching your tent? Second, who has the hearts of your family? Third, what duties are you neglecting?

And fourth, what do you love most? So first, where are you pitching your tent? Where are you pitching your tent? We are quick to condemn Lot for dwelling in Sodom, but that's not where he started. In fact, he may have never intended to actually dwell inside that city.

After all, the Apostle Peter describes him as a righteous man. But this is where we find him, here in chapter 19, right in the middle of Sodom. How did he wind up there? We'll turn a few pages back to Genesis 13. Genesis 13 sheds light on how that came to pass.

With me at verse 7. And there was strife between the herdsmen of Abram's livestock and the herdsmen of Lot's livestock. The Canaanites and the Perizzites then dwelt in the land. So Abraham said to Lot, Please, let there be no strife between you and me and between my herdsmen and your herdsmen, for we are brethren. It's not the whole land before you.

Please, separate from me. If you take the left, then I will go to the right, or if you go to the right, then I will go to the left." And Lot lifted his eyes and saw all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt as you go toward Zoar. Then Lot chose for himself all the plain of Jordan, and Lot journeyed east. And they separated from each other. Abraham dwelt in the land of Canaan, And Lot dwelt in the cities of the plain, and pitched his tent even as far as Sodom.

But the men of Sodom were exceedingly wicked and sinful against the Lord. Then Abram moved his tent, and went and dwelt by the terebinth trees of Mamre, which are in Hebron, and built an altar there to the Lord." The first thing I want you to note in this passage regarding the location of Lot's tent is the costly isolation. God's call was to Abraham, not to Lot. God's Promise was to Abraham. God's blessing rested upon Abraham.

So when strife arose between the herdsmen of Abraham and the herdsmen of Lot, the response was to separate. And in this separation, Lot ends up isolating himself from the church of that time. He walks away from the Promised Land and goes eastward. Dear ones, The devil's desire is to isolate you. It's to isolate your family.

Those who are isolated are easier prey for the lion or the wolf who seeks to devour them. Men, are you purposefully or inadvertently isolating your family, your wife, your children from the life of the church? Are you becoming isolated? If you are, then be assured that you are teaching your family by your example that it's okay to be a part of the head of the church and be isolated from the body. That the church is not needed.

The cities of man are crucial for life. But the church is optional. The church cannot meet the needs of this life. And in such isolation, our families are cut off from the means of grace. They are cut off from the gifts of the body.

They are cut off from the fellowship of the saints, and cut off from the watchfulness of the under-shepherds and cut off from the fellowship of Christ Himself, which He does when He engages with His body. So the first thing we see is a costly isolation. Now the second thing to note here regarding the location of Lot's tent is the carnal rationalization. There was a carnal rationalization. Lot did not seem to take into consideration the will of the Lord or the welfare of his family when making his decision.

He lifted his eyes horizontally upon the landscape, noted the abundance of the land towards the east and made his choice accordingly. No prayer to Jehovah, no consideration of what was best for his uncle and no consideration of what was good for his family and the impact that it would have. No dear fear of the influence of Sodom, no due fear. He just lifted up his eyes and he chose. He chose the ease of life and the attractive prosperity over the less desired desert area.

But note the response of Abraham. He took the less desirable place and set up his tent, but in that place built an altar there to the Lord. Men, your children are watching you as you make decisions in your life. And by watching you, they are being discipled to either lift up their eyes to the planes around them or lift up their eyes to Jehovah? Which is it?

Which is it? Walk about your house and identify all the goods in your house. Do they draw out the heart after Sodom, after Babylon, or do they draw out the heart to God? Are we feeding on the best this world has to offer, Or are we feeding on the living Word of God? Is there, like Abraham, an altar to God in the midst of your home?

I'm not talking about a physical altar. I'm talking about a place that you gather to worship God as a family. In our homes, by our words and conduct, by what we set up and what we allow, we are instructing and educating our families. We are declaring what is important to us. We are informing the minds of our children.

We are solidifying in their consciences principles and habits. We are instructing and governing, not only with words, but also with actions. And what we teach is shaping within their very hearts the means they will employ for every choice they will make in the future. There was carnal rationalization occurring in regard to where Lot's tent was being pitched. The third thing regarding the location of Lot's tent is the constant dissatisfaction.

Constant dissatisfaction. Lot dwelt in the cities of the plain, but that was not satisfactory. So he pitched his tent, the text says, even as far as Sodom. And by the time we arrive at chapter 19, we find Lot living in a house in the middle of Sodom. One has once said, Sin will take you farther than you want to go.

It will keep you longer than you want to stay, and it will cost you more than you want to pay. Are we teaching our children that the pleasures of sin last only for a season? That they will not bring satisfaction? Are we, by our words and actions, proclaiming that in God's presence is fullness of joy, that at His right hand are pleasures forevermore? Do not fool yourselves.

If you are giving your children even the smallest morsels of the world, you are creating a growing appetite for more because there's no satisfaction to be found in these things. These morsels will not satisfy. They come back more hungry. Today, maybe they are next door to Abraham, dwelling in the plains. But it is only a matter of time before our children are dwelling in Sodom.

And don't shrug off that idea as too great an impossibility for your kids. Remember, Lot was a righteous man. Where are you pitching your tent? Where you are pitching Your tent is discipling your children to either love God or to love the world. Either to seek the kingdom of God or to seek their own kingdoms.

To desire to serve or to desire to live a life of ease. To build altars to Jehovah or to build altars to their own pleasure. The second question that arises from a consideration of the ruin of Lot's family is, Who has the hearts of your family? Solomon says in Proverbs 23 26, My son, give me your heart, and let your eyes observe my ways." This is what a man does. A man who is serious about the discipling of his wife and his children.

He seeks after their hearts. He understands the importance of and desires to win their hearts and their imitation. Where the heart goes, the mind, the will, and the emotions follow. Christ made that clear in Matthew 5. Where your heart is found, there, in that same place, your treasure will be found.

And whatever it is that is your treasure, it will demand the totality of your mind, your will, your emotions, and your affections. We should desire the hearts of our wife and children in order to set them heavenward. Yet far too often, fathers end up losing the hearts of their family. Or if they do gain their hearts, they are inadvertently setting those hearts on the things of this world. In Genesis 19, we see the hearts of Lot's family set on everything earthly and nothing heavenward.

Their affections were devoid of anything whole, anything good. Men, Are you aware of the battle for the heart of your wife in the hearts of your children? It's a battle! Stephen McElpine, a pastor and Church Planter in Perth, Australia, posted the following on his blog back in May 2015. He says, If we assume neutral culture, then we assume we can get involved in and play with culture without getting infected by it, that we can remain distinct from it, undrawn to its more sickly parts, and more than capable of knowing when to say no to culture's soft focus, slow motion, beckoning, and degenerate.

Join us! Join us! Simply put, we assume that we can have more impact on culture than it can have on us. That, he says, is dangerously naive thinking. Jesus never said the culture will misunderstand you.

He said the world will hate you. World will hate you." Our culture is not neutral at all. It is aggressive. It is seeking the hearts, men, of everyone in your family. The world is constantly at the gate of our home with various Trojan horses full of all sorts of mischief.

It is seeking to infiltrate our homes in order to steal the hearts of our family, and it is often doing so right under our very noses, without the slightest response from us. This is the way it has been since the beginning of the world. Satan sought for the heart of Eve, and the fact that she ate and then turned to her husband to give him a bite seems to indicate that Adam stood by and said nothing and did nothing. Men, are you preoccupied with your own affairs? Are you standing by while Satan infiltrates your house?

Paul declared that we are not ignorant of Satan's devices. Would he be able to say that about us? Would he be able to say that about you? That dear brother, that dear sister, he or she are not ignorant of Satan's devices. Men were in a battle, and there is more at stake than just our very own souls, as this sad narrative declares fully and so vividly that the souls of each and every family member is at stake.

All the souls under our watch care. Dad, who has the hearts of your family? The third question that we are forced to deal with is, What duties are you neglecting? Lot was a successful man. He had so much of this world's goods that he could not dwell together with Abraham.

The land was not able to support them both. Lot was an important man. He sat in the gate of the city, most likely as a judge or some city official. But we discover in the text that his family was in ruins, heading down a destructive path. Men, we can be considered successful, we can be considered important in the eyes of the world, and yet at the very same time be neglecting our duties as husbands and as fathers.

How are you measuring your success? Is it possible that you are successful in the eyes of the world but are failing in the things God has called you to do within the doors of your household. In the last day, we will give an account unto God. Here are a few questions in light of the duties seen in our passage. Here's one duty.

Are you providing your wife and children spiritual sustenance? Are you providing your wife and your children spiritual sustenance. Lot's dwelling place was highlighted by his proximity to Sodom. That's throughout this passage. Where is Lot in relation to Sodom?

Abraham's dwelling place, on the other hand, was highlighted by his proximity to Jehovah. He built an altar there under the terebinth trees where he pitched his tent. Everywhere he went, he built an altar to the Lord. Men, we are to be discipling our children in the fear and admonition of the Lord and teaching them the law of our God when we sit in our homes, when we walk by the way, when we lie down, and when we rise up. Christ said that man should not live by bread alone.

If that's the case, are you providing your family with more than the bread on the table? Is your family spiritually malnourished? Is there an altar in your house? A place? A time?

A pattern of worshipping Jehovah? If there is not, or if it is extremely inconsistent, my suspicions are that your tent is moving ever closer to Sodom? If there is no family worship going on, or if it's happening inconsistently, my suspicions are that your tent is moving ever closer to Sodom. Second, are you providing your wife and children spiritual protection? Spiritual protection.

Are you providing them spiritual protection? The angels charged Lot with the warning and safekeeping of all who He had in the city. Sons-in-law, sons, daughters, the angels commanded Lot, take them out of this place. From heaven's perspective, it was Lot's duty as a father. He didn't come and gather everybody.

He said, everybody come, hear what we have to say. No, Lot sent the angels, I mean, excuse me, God sent the angels, sent them to Lot, and the angels said, You, you gather up the family and get them out. His duty was to seek to spare his family from the judgment of God that was coming. He had already failed to provide physical protection to his daughters, offering them as an exchange for the well-being of the angelic guests who had come under his roof. And does not your fatherly love and care bristle at the fact that Lot was so ready to place his daughters in such an awful predicament?

And yet I propose to you that the sin of leaving your children spiritually unprotected is far greater. It's far greater. How is it not the greater sin when we fail to protect them all the time knowing that Satan desires their destruction, that he is trying to allure them from any godly influences, that He is trying to increase their appetites for the things of this world. How is it not the greater sin to leave them spiritually unprotected when it involves more than just the brevity of this fleeting life. It involves eternity.

It involves not simply the body, but their very souls. Men, our families need the gospel of Christ to prepare them for the life to come. We also need to provide spiritual protection from the press of this world that is seeking to mold our families into the system of Babylon, the system of Sodom. How are you? I hope I don't need to ask, are you?

But how are you protecting your children in the areas of literature? TV and video. Recreation. Companionships. Relationships.

Social media, music, internet. Let me put it bluntly, but with loving concern. If you don't have a clue, or you're not being deliberate in each of these areas, you are not protecting your family. The failure of Lot to provide this spiritual protection to his daughters and his wife caused the depraved planning at the end of chapter 19 that led to such immoral perversion. Are you providing your wife and children spiritual protection?

Third, under this category of neglecting duties, Are you taking the Word of God seriously? We are told here that it was the sheer mercy of God that the angels that he had sent took Lot and his family by the hands and brought them out of the city and told them to escape for their lives. They had given that responsibility to Lot, and Lot lingered. It was a mercy that these angels grabbed their hands and practically pulled them out of the city. Are you neglecting the duties God has given you?

Are you neglecting those duties? Are you failing to respond? Maybe you intend to respond. You've got good motives, good desires, but are you failing to respond? Just dragging your feet on duties.

It's easy to come to a conference like this, to have message after message after message, and to come away with a heart that is torn in two, to come away with vows to God, to come away knowing that there needs to be changes. And then we get back to our homes, life settles in and it's just the normal. And we can so easily fall back into those patterns, we can linger and not take our wives and our children by the hand in saying we have to leave where we've been. There need to be changes. Are you lingering?

Are you lingering? Please note that there is no promise that the Lord will be as merciful with us as He was with Lot. God doesn't promise that, that if we linger, He will send angelic beings to cause us to move. In fact, Genesis 19.29 makes it evident that it was the intercession of righteous Abraham that moved God to rescue Lot from the judgment coming upon Sodom. So it boils down to this.

Are you taking the Word of God seriously? If you are, you will be men of action, doers of the Word and not hearers only, drawing near to God with your heart and not merely with the lips. What duties are you neglecting? And we come now to the fourth and final question from our text, What do you love most? What do you love most?

We have seen thus far, Where are you pitching your tent? Who has the hearts of your family? What duties are you neglecting? And now, fourthly and finally, what do you love most? John MacArthur, in his book Being a Dad Who Leads, states the following, Parenting is first and foremost a spiritual task, one in which personal righteousness, One in which personal righteousness, personal self-control, and the personal mortification of our own flesh are all necessary prerequisites to proper discipline and instruction of our children.

In short, the only way to be a dad who leads well is to be a dad who lives well. You've heard it before. Are you practicing what you preach? If we're going to lead well, men, we have to live well. We have to live well.

How is it with you, Dad? Are you living well? Where is your heart? What do you love? If you are not living well, you won't lead well.

And if your heart is not set on Christ, how can you guide the hearts of your children there? Our children are most likely not going to love something that we don't love. It just doesn't happen very often. When Lot approached his sons-in-law with the Word of God, they did not take Lot seriously. They thought he was joking.

And I submit to you that it must have been partly due to what they had seen in Lot's own life, or maybe more precisely, what they did not see in Lot's life. It's my fear that we're not worshipping God in our families because our hearts, Dad, are preoccupied with a love for something other than or greater than our Savior. And that love for that idol strangles any attempt at leading our families. Our consciences scream out to us and we either draw back from lack of love to our Savior, or we go through the motions with little or no heart in our families since the hypocrisy. And so, because of those reasons, maybe we're not as faithful as we should be.

Maybe we've set it aside. Maybe you've, in the past, had faithful family worship. How is it today? And if it's not happening, have you lost your first love? Those in Ephesians, those in Ephesus, in Revelation chapter 1, they did well.

But God said, I have this against you, you've left your first love. Men, does your life promote the Gospel as loud as your words? Are you discipling your wife and children heavenward? We cannot change their hearts. We can't do it.

Only Christ can do that. But what is within the scope of our abilities and duty is to promote the gospel of our Savior inward and indeed. To command our children in the ways of the Lord, as Abraham did, that they may keep his ways in order to do what is righteous and just, to instruct them out of his word." Then we heard it last night. Christ urged His disciples to remember Lot's wife. I urge you today to also remember His daughters and his sons-in-law.

For the sake of our children and before a watching world and a watching church, we must be willing to be thought radical or extreme for our God. We must be radical in our commitment to Christ, radical in our view of His law, radical in our worship, radical in our marriage, radical in our labor for Christ's kingdom. And that radical nature is only thought to be radical in the eyes of the watching world. It's not radical with our God. It's what He commanded us to do.

Well, in closing, I would just like to draw your attention to the stark contrasts of the divine visitation. In chapter 18 of Genesis, we read of Christ along with two angels visiting the house of Abraham. This visitation was for the purpose of revealing God's gracious promises for the descendants of Abraham. And these were the words of Christ, Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the appointed time, I will return to you according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son.

And he also said, Shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing, since Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him?" You see, God knew the heart of Abraham, that he would command his children after him. That was a divine visitation from the Lord Jesus Christ. But how about the divine visitation of Lot? Lot had a divine visitation. But the first thing to note is that Christ does not join the two angelic beings.

Christ remains with Abraham. Lot is visited by the angels, but Christ is conspicuously absent. God's promise of an heir for Abraham is given in the context of the pregnancy of Sarah, whose body is almost 90, past the age of bearing children. That's the context of the future for Abraham, a blessed promise, spoken by Christ. For Lot, no such promise.

The visitation is not for the purpose of promise. It's for the rescue of their very own persons. And devoid of any hope, Lot's daughters devised a plan for bringing about the continuance of the family line. Springing from these visitations came forth heirs to both, for Abraham an heir according to the promise, for Lot heirs born out of incestuous Acts. And springing from these two visitations came forth incredible providence in the lives of their wives.

To Abraham, a wife who became a pillar in the lineage of the Messiah. That's a lot who became a pillar of salt. Springing from these two visitations came forth a trajectory of two families. To Abraham, a family that would prove a blessing to all nations. To Lot, a family that would prove to be a thorn in the side of God's people.

Men, what sort of visitation are you desirous of receiving one like Abraham's? Promises? Blessings? Or a visitation like Sodom, that if only by God's grace to be rescued and then to lose your families. What's the trajectory of your family?

And if you've been convicted on some level, as I have just studying this, I want you to know there is grace, there is forgiveness, there is cleansing for all who will confess their sins. You are not my brother, my sister, without hope. Do not wallow in dismay and doubt. Don't you linger from going to Christ. Go to him.

God can restore the days, the weeks, the months, and the years that the locusts have eaten. May God give us grace to raise up families that will prove to be a blessing to the church and to the world. May God make us faithful to Him. Let's pray. O gracious God, we pray for grace to draw near to the throne of mercy, to ask for help in this time of need, to confess our sins knowing that you are just and faithful, to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

And that where we find sin, to be reminded that we have an Advocate there in your presence, even the Lord Jesus Christ. O Lord, we ask for such a sweet visitation as Abraham knew. Give us grace to be faithful, that no matter where we are, that there in that place, it is a Bethel. It's a house of you, our God. Meet with us.

Help us. Lord, you are our Ebenezer. You have brought us to this place. God, give us grace that this race we've begun, that we will finish well and that we will have those words spoken to us when we reach eternity. Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Lord.

Make it to be so. Spare our families, we pray. And where we fail, may your grace come in and pick up our wives and our children in that place and do for them what we cannot do. We pray in Christ's holy name, amen.