Latest / Reformed Thinking / The Smoke and the Savior: Judgment, Intercession, and Sovereign Grace (Genesis 19:27–29)

Transcript

The Smoke and the Savior: Judgment, Intercession, and Sovereign Grace (Genesis 19:27–29) · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  Welcome to Reformed Thinking. We're glad you could join us for
• 0:02
  this session. It's good to be here to get into
• 0:04
  the text together. Today we're doing something a
• 0:06
  little different. We're going to zoom in, really
• 0:09
  use a microscope on just three specific verses 3 we're turning
• 0:14
  our attention to Genesis chapter 19, verses 27 through 29.
• 0:19
  And if you know your Old Testament history, you know the
• 0:22
  context here is, well, it's heavy.
• 0:25
  It's the morning after. The morning after the complete
• 0:28
  and total destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
• 0:30
  And it's a scene that I think we often just fly past.
• 0:33
  We do. We focus on the, you know, the
• 0:35
  action movie part. The night before the fire from
• 0:38
  the sky, the flight, the pillar of salt.
• 0:40
  But the narrator makes us pause here for a reason.
• 0:43
  It's quiet. The sun is coming up and Abraham
• 0:46
  walks out to look at the horizon.
• 0:48
  And that contrast is so jarring. You have this, this piece of a
• 0:51
  new day, the world waking up like it's any other Tuesday.
• 0:55
  And then you have the absolute horror of what Abraham is
• 0:58
  seeing. So our goal for this deep dive
• 1:00
  is to, in a sense, stand on that Ridge right there with Abraham.
• 1:03
  Yeah, to see what he sees. And to move beyond just the
• 1:07
  spectacle of the disaster itself and really get a hold of the
• 1:11
  specific theology of judgement and mercy that's packed into
• 1:14
  these three little verses. And we should be upfront about
• 1:17
  our lens here. We are coming at this text from
• 1:20
  a reformed perspective. We are, which means we see
• 1:23
  history not as just a series of random events, but as the the
• 1:29
  theater of God's judgments. And Scripture itself is a
• 1:31
  unified whole. That's right.
• 1:33
  So when we look at a text like this, we're seeing God's
• 1:35
  sovereignty on full display. We're seeing a God who is holy
• 1:39
  and a God who keeps his promises.
• 1:41
  OK, so let's set the stage physically.
• 1:42
  We start in verse 27. It says that Abraham got up
• 1:45
  early in the morning. And even that detail is worth
• 1:47
  noting. He's not sleeping in.
• 1:49
  No, he's not pulling the covers over his head and hoping it was
• 1:52
  all a bad dream. He gets up with a purpose and
• 1:55
  the text says he went to the place where he had stood before
• 1:57
  the Lord. Let's unpack that.
• 1:59
  The place where he had stood. This isn't just a random
• 2:02
  viewpoint he likes. This is.
• 2:03
  This is significant real estate. It is.
• 2:06
  It connects us directly back to the previous chapter, Genesis
• 2:08
  18. This is the exact spot.
• 2:10
  The precise geographic location where Abraham stood the day
• 2:14
  before and interceded for Sodom. This is where that incredible
• 2:17
  dialogue happened, Where he asked, shall not the judge of
• 2:20
  all the earth do right? The very place he bargained,
• 2:24
  you'll remember, started at 50 righteous people, then 45.
• 2:28
  All the way down to 10. So he's returning to the scene
• 2:30
  of the prayer. He is, and that single action
• 2:33
  tells us something about the posture of believer.
• 2:36
  What do you mean by posture? Well, the Hebrew word used here
• 2:39
  for stood is a mad a mad and it has a specific feel to it.
• 2:43
  It's not just hanging around or loitering.
• 2:45
  It's the posture of a servant waiting for a command from his
• 2:48
  master or a priest ministering before God.
• 2:52
  It implies this attitude of of active watchfulness.
• 2:56
  So he's not there as a disaster tourist.
• 2:59
  He didn't bring his camera to gawk at the wreckage.
• 3:02
  He's not a tourist of calamity. That's a great way to put it.
• 3:05
  He's a covenant servant. He's engaged in what you might
• 3:07
  call a holy anxiety, a watchfulness.
• 3:11
  He poured his heart out to God the day before, and now he's
• 3:13
  coming back to see the answer. He is.
• 3:16
  He wants to see how the king is ruled.
• 3:18
  It makes me think of the Watchmen idea that we see later
• 3:21
  in the prophets in Ezekiel. That's a very strong connection.
• 3:25
  Ezekiel 33. The watchman sees the sword
• 3:28
  coming and is responsible for blowing the trumpet.
• 3:31
  There's a responsibility there, a.
• 3:32
  Huge one. And Abraham is acting like that,
• 3:35
  like the head of a household or maybe like a church officer.
• 3:38
  Today he's awake to the spiritual realities, while the
• 3:41
  world around him is, you know, still asleep.
• 3:43
  You know, that really challenges how we so often think about
• 3:47
  prayer today. Also.
• 3:48
  I feel like in the modern shirt, prayer can become this kind of
• 3:51
  emotional release valve. I'm stressed, so I pray to feel
• 3:54
  better and then I just move on with my day.
• 3:57
  That's very true. We treat it as therapeutic.
• 3:59
  We just dump our anxieties and then walk away.
• 4:01
  But Abraham shows us that prayer is real engagement with the
• 4:04
  living God. He expects an answer.
• 4:06
  He expects God to act, and so he returns to the place of prayer
• 4:10
  to see the answer. You know, if we pray for our
• 4:12
  nation or for our neighbors, do we actually look for the answer?
• 4:16
  Or do we just check a box to make ourselves feel like we did
• 4:20
  something? Right.
• 4:22
  Abraham returned to the spot. He wanted to know what the judge
• 4:25
  of all the Earth had decided. And what he sees, well, that
• 4:28
  brings us to the next verse, verse 28.
• 4:31
  And he looked down towards Sodom and Gomorrah.
• 4:34
  The verb for look down there is Shuck off.
• 4:38
  It's not a casual glance. It means to look down from a
• 4:41
  height. But with a deliberate, intense
• 4:44
  scrutiny. He's scanning the horizon.
• 4:47
  He's really looking. And then he sees it.
• 4:50
  The smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace.
• 4:52
  This is the visual anchor of the whole passage.
• 4:55
  Yeah. And to really feel the force of
• 4:56
  this, we have to get a little technical with the Hebrew.
• 4:58
  OK, The word for furnace is kipshon.
• 5:01
  Kipshon So is that like a fireplace or campfire?
• 5:05
  No, and that is a key distinction.
• 5:06
  This is not a cozy cooking fire. It's not a hearth where you'd
• 5:09
  warm your hand. OK, So what is it?
• 5:11
  A kipshon was an industrial kiln.
• 5:13
  An industrial kiln. Yes, the kind used for smelting
• 5:16
  lime or firing pottery. We're talking about intense,
• 5:20
  suffocating heat, the kind of heat that chemically alters the
• 5:23
  very structure of whatever is inside it.
• 5:26
  So the image isn't just a brush fire in the distance, this is
• 5:28
  more like like industrial exhaust.
• 5:31
  Think of a thick, dark, choking plume blotting out the morning
• 5:35
  sun. It suggests total, irreversible
• 5:39
  destruction. A picture of suffocation and
• 5:41
  finality. That is a terrifying image, and
• 5:44
  it really brings us face to face with a theology of judgement
• 5:47
  that, let's be honest, a lot of modern Christianity tries very
• 5:50
  hard to avoid. It completely refused what we
• 5:52
  could call therapeutic Christianity.
• 5:54
  Explain that. Well, there's this pervasive
• 5:56
  idea of a harmless God. A God who just exists to affirm
• 6:00
  us and tell us we're OK, but who never actually judges.
• 6:02
  A God without wrath. And this text just shatters
• 6:05
  that. It destroys that idol.
• 6:07
  The outcry of Sodom, it's sin came up to God and God answered.
• 6:10
  The answer was fire. It does sound harsh to our
• 6:13
  modern ears. It does, but we have to hold
• 6:15
  this alongside our confessions. Think of the Westminster
• 6:17
  Confession of Faith. Chapter 2.
• 6:19
  Section 1. It describes God as most just
• 6:23
  and terrible in his judgments, hating all sin.
• 6:28
  We can't have a truly loving God if we don't also have a God who
• 6:31
  hates evil. Right.
• 6:33
  If God looked at the wickedness of Sodom, the violence, the
• 6:36
  abuse, and just shrugged, he wouldn't be a good God.
• 6:39
  He wouldn't be just a judge who lets a murderer go free because
• 6:43
  he wants to be nice is not a good judge.
• 6:46
  He's a corrupt 1. So this visual, the smoke, it
• 6:49
  serves a purpose then. It does.
• 6:51
  In theology, we talk about the second use of the law.
• 6:53
  To restrain wickedness. Right.
• 6:55
  The law restrains evil by showing the consequences.
• 6:57
  This smoke is a visible sermon. The land itself becomes a
• 7:01
  witness. A testimony.
• 7:02
  It testifies that God's wrath is not just a metaphor.
• 7:05
  It has a historical footprint. It leaves a scar on the land.
• 7:08
  So when Abraham looks at that smoke, he is seeing the physical
• 7:11
  proof that God is holy. Yes, he's seen that sin has a
• 7:15
  wage, and that wage is death. It's a visual sermon on the
• 7:19
  holiness of God. Now if the story stopped there,
• 7:21
  it would be incredibly bleak. Just smoke and ash it would be.
• 7:24
  But then we get to verse 29 and this is the pivot point of the
• 7:27
  whole passage. It is.
• 7:28
  The grammar itself does the heavy lifting here.
• 7:32
  The verse says so it was when God destroyed the cities of the
• 7:36
  valley. God remembered Abraham and set
• 7:39
  Lot out. OK, let's break down that
• 7:42
  sentence structure. The main action of that sentence
• 7:44
  is not the destruction. No, it's in a subordinate clause
• 7:48
  when God destroyed its background information.
• 7:51
  The main subject, the grammatical center of the whole
• 7:53
  thing, is God. God destroyed.
• 7:57
  God remembered. God sent out.
• 7:59
  Which means we can't just write this off as a freak natural
• 8:03
  disaster. You can't.
• 8:04
  You'll hear people try to explain Sodom away as oh, it was
• 8:07
  an earthquake, or a subterranean gas explosion, or just political
• 8:10
  collapse. But the text won't let you do
• 8:12
  that. No, it was a specific judicial
• 8:15
  act carried out by the Judge of all the earth.
• 8:18
  God is the active agent from start to finish.
• 8:20
  And the key verb in all of this seems to be remembered.
• 8:23
  God remembered Abraham. Now what does that mean?
• 8:27
  Does it mean God forgot about them for a minute?
• 8:29
  Right, like a lot. I almost forgot he was down.
• 8:31
  There. Yeah, exactly.
• 8:32
  No, not at all. And this is a really crucial
• 8:34
  distinction to make in the Bible.
• 8:36
  When it says God remembers, it doesn't mean he's recalling
• 8:40
  something from a faulty memory. It's not about mental recall.
• 8:44
  It's about a movement from thought to action based on a
• 8:47
  prior promise or relationship. Can you give us another example
• 8:51
  of that? Sure.
• 8:52
  Think of Noah in the ark. Genesis 8.1 says God remembered
• 8:56
  Noah. It didn't mean God had lost
• 8:58
  track of the ark in the storm. No, of course not.
• 9:00
  It meant the time had now come for God to act on his promise to
• 9:03
  Noah and make the waters recede. Or in Exodus, when Israel is
• 9:08
  enslaved in Egypt, it says God remembered his covenant with
• 9:11
  Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Same principle is the activation
• 9:14
  of covenant faithfulness. It's God moving to keep his
• 9:17
  word. So when our text says God
• 9:19
  remembered Abraham, it means God is now acting based on the
• 9:22
  covenant relationship he has with Abraham.
• 9:24
  Precisely, it is the execution of a standing agreement.
• 9:27
  And here's where it gets really, really interesting for me.
• 9:30
  The text says God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out.
• 9:35
  That is the shocking part of verse 29.
• 9:38
  It is logically you'd expected to say God remembered lot and
• 9:42
  sent lot. Out.
• 9:43
  Or maybe God saw that Lot was a righteous man and so he sent Lot
• 9:48
  out. But it doesn't say that at all.
• 9:50
  It anchors Lot's rescue entirely in the person of Abraham.
• 9:54
  And right there you have the doctrine of mediation.
• 9:57
  Imputation and mediation, yeah, but in narrative form, Lot is
• 10:01
  not saved because of Lot. Not at all.
• 10:04
  Lot is saved because of his connection to Abraham.
• 10:06
  And let's be honest about Lot for a moment.
• 10:08
  We call him righteous Lot because two peer calls him that.
• 10:10
  But if you just read the Genesis account, I mean the man is a
• 10:14
  mess. He is a deeply compromised
• 10:16
  figure. He chose to live in Sodom in the
• 10:18
  1st place. He hesitated when the angels
• 10:20
  told him to run for his life. He.
• 10:21
  Offered his daughters to a violent Rob, he lingers.
• 10:25
  He does. He lingers so if salvation
• 10:27
  depended on Lot's moral performance or his spiritual
• 10:31
  zeal in that moment. He would have been incinerated.
• 10:33
  He'd have been part of that smoke.
• 10:34
  Abraham was watching. He would have so he is a picture
• 10:37
  of the believer who is saved as Paul says so as by fire.
• 10:42
  And this where the trajectory toward Christ becomes so clear
• 10:46
  you can't miss it. Abraham is acting here as a type
• 10:50
  of Christ, a mediator. Explain what you mean by that.
• 10:54
  How is Abraham a type of Christ here?
• 10:57
  Well, just think about the gospel.
• 10:59
  Why are believers saved? Is it because we're so
• 11:01
  inherently worthy? No.
• 11:03
  Is it because our moral performance is so impressive?
• 11:05
  Of course not. We are saved because God
• 11:07
  remembers Jesus Christ. That is a powerful parallel at.
• 11:11
  The heart of Reformed soteriology.
• 11:13
  You look at the Westminster Confession again, Chapter 11 on
• 11:16
  justification. It says we are accepted as
• 11:18
  righteous only for the righteousness of Christ imputed
• 11:22
  to us. Imputed credited to our account.
• 11:25
  So just as Lot was pulled out of the fire because of Abraham
• 11:28
  standing with God. We were pulled out of the final
• 11:30
  judgement because of Christ's perfect standing with the
• 11:32
  Father. But there is a huge difference,
• 11:34
  isn't there? Abraham isn't a perfect
• 11:36
  mediator. That is the critical
• 11:37
  distinction. Abraham is a shadow, a pointer,
• 11:40
  but Christ is the substance. Abraham could plead.
• 11:43
  He could plead for mercy, yes. He could stand on the Ridge and
• 11:47
  ask God to spare the city, but Abraham could not atone for the
• 11:51
  sin of that city. He.
• 11:53
  Stood near the judgement. He watched it.
• 11:55
  But he did not take the judgement upon himself and
• 11:57
  Christ. Did.
• 11:58
  Christ entered the furnace. That's the difference.
• 12:01
  Jesus didn't just stand on a hill and watch the smoke of our
• 12:04
  judgement. He went into the fire on the
• 12:07
  cross. He absorbed the full wrath of
• 12:09
  God that was due to us. So Christ's mediation is
• 12:12
  infinitely better than Abraham's.
• 12:14
  Infinitely, but Abraham gives us the category to understand it.
• 12:19
  We are saved because of another. Our salvation is outside of
• 12:22
  ourselves. I appreciate that because it
• 12:24
  takes all the pressure off of us to be the hero of our own story.
• 12:27
  Lot was certainly not the hero of his.
• 12:28
  Not even close. He was the object of the rescue,
• 12:31
  not the subject of the action. And Speaking of that rescue,
• 12:33
  let's look at the action itself, the sending out.
• 12:36
  The verse says God sent Lot out. That Hebrew verb is shalach, and
• 12:41
  in this context when you combine it with the earlier description
• 12:43
  of the angels literally grabbing his hands and his family's
• 12:46
  hands. It implies force.
• 12:48
  It implies expulsion, a forceful deliverance.
• 12:51
  So this wasn't a polite invitation.
• 12:53
  It wasn't. Hey lot you chaps might want to
• 12:54
  consider heading out now. No, it was practically A
• 12:57
  kidnapping. For his own good, he had to be
• 12:59
  dragged to safety. The text makes it clear that if
• 13:02
  God hadn't used force, Lot would still be there.
• 13:05
  He would have stayed. That sounds a whole lot like
• 13:08
  Irresistible Grace to me. It was a very vivid illustration
• 13:11
  of it. Salvation is a rescue operation.
• 13:14
  It's not a self help program. We don't just wake up 1 morning
• 13:16
  and decide to save ourselves. No, God has to intervene.
• 13:19
  He has to grab us by the hand and at times drag us out of the
• 13:23
  path of our own self destruction.
• 13:25
  It shows God's sovereignty in salvation and.
• 13:27
  It speaks to his Providence, too.
• 13:29
  Absolutely. The Westminster Confession
• 13:31
  chapter 5 explains this so well. God orders all things.
• 13:36
  Just think about the sheer mechanics of this event.
• 13:38
  He's orchestrating the the geological or supernatural
• 13:41
  destruction of these cities. While at the same time
• 13:43
  coordinating the precise evacuation of one tiny family.
• 13:47
  The same hand that overthrows is the same hand that extracts.
• 13:50
  It is. It's that paradox of judgment
• 13:53
  and mercy happening at the exact same moment, in the exact same
• 13:57
  event. It's the dual nature of God's
• 13:59
  work in history. He preserves his church even
• 14:03
  while he judges the world. He does it with perfect timing
• 14:06
  and precision. He really does.
• 14:08
  So we have this intense theology packed into just these 3 verses.
• 14:13
  But this isn't a one off event. This pattern, it shows up all
• 14:16
  over the Bible. It's a canonical pattern.
• 14:18
  You see it again and again. God distinguishes, He preserves,
• 14:22
  and he brings his people. Out you see it with Noah.
• 14:24
  The whole world is judged. But one family is preserved in
• 14:28
  the Ark. We see it in the Exodus.
• 14:30
  Egypt is judged with plagues. And Israel's brought out.
• 14:33
  We see it with Rahab and Jericho.
• 14:35
  The city walls fall. But her house, marked by the
• 14:38
  scarlet cord, stands firm. We even see it with Elijah being
• 14:42
  sustained through famine. And the New Testament writers
• 14:44
  definitely pick up on this theme you mentioned to Peter earlier.
• 14:47
  Yes, tell you Peter chapter 2 verses 6 through 9.
• 14:49
  Peter uses Sodom and Gomorrah as his prime case study.
• 14:53
  What does he? Say.
• 14:54
  He says if God turned those cities to ashes as an example
• 14:58
  and yet rescued righteous lot, then, and this is the
• 15:01
  conclusion, the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials.
• 15:06
  The Lord knows how I find that so comforting it.
• 15:09
  Means God is confident. He's not confused.
• 15:12
  He knows how to make the distinction.
• 15:14
  He doesn't accidentally sweep away the righteous with the
• 15:16
  wicked. He knows how to manage history
• 15:18
  to ensure his people are kept safe.
• 15:20
  OK, So what does this all mean for us, for the person listening
• 15:23
  to this right now? Let's talk about application we
• 15:26
  can. Look at this through the lens of
• 15:27
  the third use of the law, how this text guides our life of
• 15:30
  gratitude and obedience. And for the believer, you'd have
• 15:34
  to say the very first application is gratitude.
• 15:36
  Gratitude while looking at a plume of smoke.
• 15:40
  Yes, intense gratitude. Because when you as a believer
• 15:43
  look at that smoke rising like a furnace, you have to realize
• 15:46
  that is what I deserved. That's the end result of my sin.
• 15:49
  Being sent out, being rescued, it's not some badge of honor for
• 15:53
  my own righteousness, it's a miracle of sheer mercy.
• 15:56
  And it should produce a kind of trembling gratitude, not
• 15:59
  arrogance or superiority. We shouldn't look at the world
• 16:02
  and feel smug, we should look at the world and feel a sense of
• 16:05
  shock that we are not burning with it.
• 16:08
  That's very well said. And that gratitude has to lead
• 16:11
  to something. It's not just a feeling.
• 16:13
  No, it has to lead to separation.
• 16:14
  You cannot love Sodom and also love the God who judged Sodom.
• 16:19
  The call for the Christian is to be distinct.
• 16:24
  Lots of big mistake was getting too comfortable in the cities of
• 16:27
  the plain. He pitched his tent towards
• 16:30
  Sodom. And we have to ask ourselves,
• 16:32
  are we doing that? Are we getting cozy with the
• 16:34
  very things that God hates? It's a tough question because
• 16:38
  it's so easy to drift. Lot drifted.
• 16:40
  And look where it got him. He lost everything except his
• 16:43
  own life. Yeah, the application is to be
• 16:45
  more like Abraham. Distinct, separate, watchful on
• 16:48
  the Ridge. And there's also an application
• 16:50
  for intercession in there. Absolutely.
• 16:52
  We're called to emulate Abraham's holy anxiety.
• 16:55
  We should be praying for our neighbors, our cities, our
• 16:58
  nations. We shouldn't just retreat to our
• 17:00
  holy huddles and say, well, let the world burn.
• 17:02
  Abraham stood before the Lord and pleaded.
• 17:05
  We are called to be priests in that way, standing in the gap.
• 17:08
  What about for the person listening who maybe isn't a
• 17:10
  believer or isn't sure what they believe?
• 17:13
  For them, the smoke is a warning.
• 17:15
  It's a warning against presumption.
• 17:17
  Think about it. The morning the fire fell, the
• 17:20
  sun rose on Sodom just like any other day.
• 17:23
  People were buying and selling, eating and drinking, getting
• 17:26
  married. They thought they had all the
• 17:28
  time in the world. They thought either God didn't
• 17:30
  exist, or he didn't care, or he wasn't watching.
• 17:34
  But the morning after reveals that God is patient.
• 17:37
  Yes, but he is not mocked. There's a real urgency to.
• 17:42
  It a huge urgency. If you're lingering in the
• 17:45
  plane, you are in mortal danger. The message of this text is to
• 17:49
  flee to the mediator, flee to the greater Abraham, who is
• 17:52
  Jesus Christ. It's a heavy text, there's no
• 17:55
  getting around that, but it is also so full of hope if you know
• 17:59
  where to look. That's the beauty of it.
• 18:00
  It holds that tension perfectly, the horror of the smoke and the
• 18:04
  comfort of the covenant side by side.
• 18:06
  So to kind of pull it all together, we've stood with
• 18:08
  Abraham this morning, we've seen the smoke, we've learned that
• 18:11
  God is a consuming fire who hates sin.
• 18:13
  But. We've also seen that God
• 18:14
  remembers. He remembers, and that is the
• 18:17
  anchor for our souls. The safety of the believer rests
• 18:20
  entirely on the fact that the Father remembers the Son.
• 18:23
  It doesn't rest on our memory of God, which is weak and faulty.
• 18:27
  It rests on God's perfect memory of his own covenant promises in
• 18:31
  Christ. I think that's the central take
• 18:33
  away. We are safe not because we
• 18:35
  remember him, but because he remembers his son.
• 18:38
  Amen to that. I want to leave all of you with
• 18:40
  one final thought to Mull over as you go about your week.
• 18:43
  Picture Abraham standing on that Ridge again.
• 18:46
  He's looking at the exact same valley that his nephew Lot
• 18:50
  looked at back in Genesis 13. That's a great point.
• 18:53
  Remember what Lot saw? He looked and he saw that it was
• 18:56
  well watered, like the garden of the Lord.
• 18:58
  Lot saw potential. He saw profit, pleasure,
• 19:01
  comfort. He saw a good place to do
• 19:02
  business. Now, years later, Abraham looks
• 19:04
  at that very same piece of land and all he sees is smoke.
• 19:08
  A stark, stark contrast. So here's the question for you
• 19:11
  to consider. When you look at the world
• 19:13
  today, at your city, at our culture, at your career, whose
• 19:18
  eyes are you using? Do you see it with the eyes of
• 19:20
  Lot, lingering and loving it, seeing only what you can get out
• 19:24
  of it for yourself? Or do you see it with the eyes
• 19:26
  of Abraham, understanding its fragility, seeing it in light of
• 19:30
  God's coming judgement and interceding for it?
• 19:33
  That is the question to wrestle with.
• 19:34
  Thanks for joining us for the session.
• 19:36
  We'll see you next time on Reformed thinking.