Latest / Reformed Thinking / Escape at Dawn: Mercy, Judgment, and the Urgency of Obedience (Genesis 19:15–22)

Transcript

Escape at Dawn: Mercy, Judgment, and the Urgency of Obedience (Genesis 19:15–22) · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  Welcome back to another session of Reformed Thinking.
• 0:02
  It's really good to have you with us again as we crack open
• 0:05
  the sources and see what we can find.
• 0:07
  It is good to be here. We have a stack of commentaries
• 0:10
  today, some heavy theological articles, and frankly, a very
• 0:14
  intense section of scripture to get through.
• 0:16
  It is intense and you're right, we're looking at a story that I
• 0:19
  think most people have heard probably since they were kids,
• 0:21
  but we usually only hear one specific angle of it.
• 0:24
  We're talking about Sodom and Gomorrah, Genesis 19.
• 0:27
  We are. But you know, usually when
• 0:29
  people talk about this is 19, the focus is all on the fire,
• 0:33
  the sulfur, the judgement, the specific sins of the city.
• 0:38
  And look, that's all there, of course.
• 0:40
  But our sources today are pointing us toward a different
• 0:43
  camera angle. We're not looking at the
• 0:44
  destruction of the city so much as the rescue of one specific
• 0:47
  man and his family. We're zooming in on verses 15
• 0:51
  through 22. This is the story of Lot, and I
• 0:53
  have to admit, reading through the prep material for this, my
• 0:56
  view of Lot shifted quite a bit. I always had this picture of him
• 1:00
  as just the guy who barely made it out.
• 1:03
  That's a fair assessment. I mean, he is the guy who barely
• 1:06
  made it out. But the question we want to
• 1:08
  wrestle with today is how did he make it out?
• 1:11
  Was it his cleverness? Was it, you know, his speed, or
• 1:15
  is it something else entirely? Right.
• 1:16
  And just so everyone knows where we're coming from, we're looking
• 1:19
  at this through a distinctively Protestant Reformed lens.
• 1:23
  We're going to be referencing the Westminster Confession a bit
• 1:25
  later because it gives us some really helpful language for
• 1:28
  what's happening here. It does.
• 1:30
  We want to treat this narrative not just as a an action movie
• 1:33
  script, though it is very dramatic, but as a theological
• 1:36
  case study. OK, it's a case study in two
• 1:38
  things that seem to collide head on total human and ability, and
• 1:42
  on the other hand absolute divine sovereignty.
• 1:44
  OK, let's set the stage then. We are in Genesis 19.
• 1:48
  If you remember the previous chapter, Abraham has been
• 1:50
  interceding, asking God if you would save the city for just 10
• 1:53
  righteous people. Then we have the scene with the
• 1:56
  angels arriving in Sodom. The mob, the blindness, it It's
• 2:00
  a chaotic, horrible night. An absolutely horrific night,
• 2:04
  but where we pick up the story the night is over.
• 2:07
  Verse 15 tells us when morning dawned.
• 2:09
  So the sun is just coming up. The mob is gone, the
• 2:12
  negotiations are. Finished.
• 2:13
  The tone of the text seems to just snap.
• 2:16
  It goes from this weird dark narrative to something very
• 2:19
  sharp and urgent. The pacing shifts gears
• 2:22
  completely. It turns into a countdown clock.
• 2:25
  You know those scenes in movies where the bomb is armed and the
• 2:27
  red numbers are taking down? That's the atmosphere here.
• 2:31
  The angels stop being guests and they start being executors of a
• 2:34
  mission. Vocabulary is all about speed.
• 2:37
  Arise, take, escape. So the angels turn to Lot and
• 2:40
  say, Arise, take your wife and your two daughters who are here,
• 2:44
  lest you be swept away in the punishment of the city.
• 2:47
  And there's a terrifying logic to that statement, lest you be
• 2:49
  swept away. It is emergency instruction.
• 2:51
  It's not advice. It isn't a suggestion that maybe
• 2:54
  a lot should consider relocating, right?
• 2:56
  It is life or death. Obedience equals survival.
• 3:00
  Delay equals death. It seems simple enough.
• 3:02
  I mean, if I'm in a building and a firefighter runs in and yells
• 3:05
  the roof is about to collapse, get out now.
• 3:08
  I like to think I'm running for the door.
• 3:09
  I'm not finishing my coffee. That's what we all like to
• 3:12
  think, isn't it? We assume that we're rational
• 3:14
  actors. We assume that if we saw the
• 3:16
  danger clearly, we would act correctly.
• 3:18
  But this is where the story takes a turn that is honestly,
• 3:22
  it's very frustrating to read. You're talking about verse 16.
• 3:25
  Verse 16 The angels have just given this command.
• 3:28
  The smoke has probably already started to smell in the air.
• 3:31
  And then we get 3 words that describe Lot's response.
• 3:34
  But he lingered. But he lingered.
• 3:37
  I stared at that for a while. Why?
• 3:39
  Why would anyone linger in that situation?
• 3:41
  That is the $1,000,000 question, and the Hebrew here gives us a
• 3:45
  little window into what's happening inside Lot.
• 3:48
  The verb used for lingered is weyet Maha.
• 3:51
  Oh, weet Maha. OK, I'm not a Hebrew scholar, so
• 3:53
  help me out. What's special about that word?
• 3:55
  Well, the morphology, the shape of the word is in what's called
• 3:59
  the hip pale stem. Usually that indicates A
• 4:01
  reflexive action. It means the subject is doing
• 4:04
  the action to themselves. So it's not just that he was
• 4:06
  slow, it's that he was making himself slow.
• 4:09
  Precisely. He wasn't just delayed because
• 4:11
  he couldn't find his sandals or he was packing a heavy bag.
• 4:14
  He was acting upon himself to delay.
• 4:18
  He was engaged in a kind of averio of internal sabotage.
• 4:22
  That is bizarre. It sounds like he's fighting
• 4:24
  himself. One part of him knows he needs
• 4:26
  to go, and another part of him is just planting his feet in the
• 4:29
  ground. It's a picture of spiritual
• 4:31
  paralysis, and this is a perfect illustration of what we mean in
• 4:34
  Reformed theology when we talk about cold depravity or
• 4:38
  corruption. Even a believer, and the New
• 4:41
  Testament does call a lot a righteous man.
• 4:43
  It does. Even a believer can be so
• 4:45
  entangled with the world that they become irrational.
• 4:48
  They can't act in their own best interest.
• 4:49
  But isn't that a contradiction? If he's a believer, if he knows
• 4:52
  God, shouldn't he trust the warning?
• 4:55
  You would think so, but think about what Lot is leaving
• 4:58
  behind. We know from earlier in Genesis
• 5:00
  that Lot moved his tent as far as Sodom, then later he moved
• 5:04
  into the city. Then we see him sitting at the
• 5:06
  gate, which implies he had a position of authority or status.
• 5:09
  He was a big shot. He was somebody.
• 5:12
  He has wealth there, he has a home, he has family members.
• 5:15
  Remember, his sons in law laughed at him when he tried to
• 5:18
  warn them They're still in the city.
• 5:20
  So walking out that door means walking away from his entire
• 5:23
  identity, his status, his money, maybe even parts of his family.
• 5:27
  Exactly. It is cognitive dissonance.
• 5:30
  He believes the report of judgement is true, but his heart
• 5:32
  is tethered to the city. He's emotionally unable to
• 5:36
  detach. It sort of refutes that idea of
• 5:38
  optimism bias we often. Have.
• 5:40
  What's that? The idea that it won't happen to
• 5:42
  me or I have more time. Lot knows it is happening right
• 5:45
  now and he still can't move. It's like the person who stays
• 5:49
  in the path of a hurricane despite the mandatory evacuation
• 5:51
  order. They know the storm is coming,
• 5:54
  but the idea of leaving the house is just too much to
• 5:56
  process. That's a great analogy.
• 5:58
  He is frozen. And here is the scary part.
• 6:01
  If the story depended on lots free will right at this moment,
• 6:04
  what happens? If it's up to him, he stays and
• 6:07
  he burns. He burns if God simply offered
• 6:10
  the open door and said the choice is yours.
• 6:13
  Lot dies in Sodom. His will is broken.
• 6:16
  He cannot choose the good. So he's stuck, he's lingering,
• 6:19
  the clock is ticking. This is where you expect the
• 6:22
  judgement to just fall and and that's the end of lot.
• 6:25
  But that's not what happens. No, and this brings us to the
• 6:29
  most significant theological pivot in the text.
• 6:32
  Verse 16 continues, The men seized him and his wife and his
• 6:36
  two daughters by the hand, the Lord being merciful to him, and
• 6:39
  they brought him out and set him outside the city.
• 6:42
  The men seized him. That is strong language.
• 6:44
  It's very strong. The Hebrew word is weyachaziku.
• 6:48
  It comes from a root that means to grasp fast, to overpower, or
• 6:52
  to take hold forcibly. It's in a stem that implies
• 6:55
  intensity. So they didn't gently guide him
• 6:57
  by the elbow. This wasn't a suggestion.
• 6:59
  Not at all. This isn't a polite usher at a
• 7:01
  wedding, this is a bouncer throwing someone out of a club.
• 7:04
  Or, to go back to your firefighter analogy, this is the
• 7:07
  firefighter physically picking up the person and dragging them
• 7:10
  to the window. It sounds aggressive.
• 7:12
  It is aggressive, it's a violent mercy, and I think that makes us
• 7:15
  uncomfortable sometimes. We like to think of grace as a
• 7:17
  gentle invitation. We like the picture of Jesus
• 7:19
  knocking at the door. Right.
• 7:21
  The gentleman God who waits for us to open.
• 7:24
  But here, God isn't knocking. He's kicking the door down and
• 7:27
  dragging Lot out and we have to ask why.
• 7:31
  While the text says it plainly, the Lord being merciful to him.
• 7:35
  That's the key. The aggression is the mercy.
• 7:37
  If God wasn't violent in this moment, Lot would be dead.
• 7:41
  This is where we get into that heavy theological concept called
• 7:44
  monarchism. OK, let's pause there.
• 7:46
  That's a term we hear in some in our rooms, but break it down for
• 7:49
  us. What does monarchism actually
• 7:51
  mean in plain English? Sure, it comes from 2 Greek
• 7:55
  words, mono meaning 1 and ergon meaning work.
• 7:59
  So one working. It's the doctrine that in the
• 8:02
  initiation or salvation, in the rescuing of the soul, God is the
• 8:06
  only active agent. We are the object of the rescue,
• 8:09
  not the partner. So it's not a handshake deal.
• 8:11
  It's not God doing his 50% and me doing my 50%.
• 8:14
  Since this 19 says absolutely not.
• 8:16
  Lot contributed nothing to his removal from the city.
• 8:18
  In fact, he contributed resistance.
• 8:21
  He lingered. God provided 100% of the
• 8:24
  movement. That really flies in the face of
• 8:26
  how a lot of people view Christianity Today.
• 8:28
  You hear a lot of God votes for you, Satan votes against you,
• 8:32
  and you cast the deciding vote. That is what we call synergism
• 8:36
  or working together, and it sounds nice because it dignifies
• 8:39
  our free will. But the Reformed view, the view
• 8:42
  we see in the Westminster Confession, is that if God
• 8:45
  waited for our vote, we would never cast it for him.
• 8:48
  Because our wanter is broken. Like lot, we want to linger.
• 8:52
  Exactly. The Westminster Confession
• 8:55
  chapter 10 puts it this way. It says God is taking away their
• 8:58
  heart of stone, and giving unto them a heart of flesh, says he
• 9:02
  is determining them to that which is good.
• 9:04
  Determining them? That sounds like he's overriding
• 9:07
  their will. Well, think about Lot.
• 9:09
  Was he dragged out against his will?
• 9:10
  Yes and no. In his paralyzed state, yes.
• 9:13
  But the goal was to save his life.
• 9:15
  It's like a doctor resetting a bone.
• 9:17
  It hurts, it feels like violence against the body, but it is the
• 9:20
  only way to heal. God overcomes our resistance
• 9:23
  because He loves us too much to let us linger in the fire.
• 9:27
  That's actually a really a comforting thought because I
• 9:30
  know my own heart. I know how often I hesitate if
• 9:33
  it's all up to me to make the smart choice every time I'm in
• 9:36
  trouble. We all are.
• 9:37
  That's what we call it, the sovereign grip.
• 9:40
  It's the grip of God on us, not our grip on him, Jesus says in
• 9:43
  John 10. No one will snatch them out of
• 9:45
  my hand. That includes snatching
• 9:48
  ourselves out of his hand because of our own stupidity.
• 9:51
  So the angels of physically manhandled Lot and his family
• 9:54
  out of the city. They're standing outside the
• 9:56
  gates, the doors shut on Sodom. You would think, OK great, they
• 10:00
  are safe, but the conversation isn't over.
• 10:02
  No, the dynamic changes instantly.
• 10:05
  We go from being carried to being commanded once they're
• 10:08
  outside, the Angel says in verse 17, Escape for your life.
• 10:11
  Do not look back or stop anywhere in the valley.
• 10:14
  Escape to the hills, lest you be swept away.
• 10:16
  OK, there are three specific commands there.
• 10:19
  Run for your life, don't look back and get to the hills.
• 10:20
  Let's tackle that don't look back part.
• 10:22
  Why is that such a big deal? Is God just being strict about
• 10:25
  curiosity? It's definitely not just
• 10:27
  curiosity in the ancient world, and honestly in our world too,
• 10:31
  the direction of your gaze indicates the direction of your
• 10:34
  heart. O looking back is a sign of what
• 10:37
  regret? It's nostalgia and it's
• 10:40
  allegiance. To look back at Sodom is to say
• 10:44
  I'm physically leaving, but I'm emotionally staying.
• 10:47
  It's mourning the loss of the wicked city.
• 10:49
  That's a heavy concept. You're being saved from
• 10:51
  judgement, but you miss the thing being judged.
• 10:54
  We see this with Israel in the wilderness, right?
• 10:56
  They're saved from slavery in Egypt.
• 10:57
  But what do they say? We remember the fish and the
• 10:59
  cucumbers and the garlic. They romanticize their
• 11:02
  captivity. Lot is being told sever the tie
• 11:05
  do not long for what is burning. And we know, sadly, that well
• 11:10
  not everyone in the group listens to this command.
• 11:12
  Right Lot's wife Jesus brings her up in Luke 17 as the
• 11:15
  ultimate warning. She is the example of someone
• 11:17
  who was physically out of Sodom, but spiritually still in it.
• 11:21
  She looked back. She became a pillar of salt.
• 11:23
  It's a. Horror movie moment, but it
• 11:25
  drives the point home. You can't have it both ways.
• 11:28
  It calls for what I would term separation without nostalgia.
• 11:31
  You have to be done with it. You can't keep a little shrine
• 11:34
  to your old life and your heart. OK, then there's the command
• 11:37
  about geography. Do not stop in the valley.
• 11:40
  Escape to the hills. Why the hills?
• 11:44
  Why not just get a safe distance away in the valley?
• 11:47
  The valley represents the danger zone.
• 11:49
  It's too close. It represents partial obedience.
• 11:53
  It's like the alcoholic who says I'll stop drinking, but I'm
• 11:55
  still going to sit in the bar and drink soda.
• 11:58
  You're hanging out in the place of temptation and in this case,
• 12:01
  judgment. And the hills.
• 12:02
  The hills are hard. They're the wilderness.
• 12:04
  It's rough terrain. It's uncomfortable, but it is.
• 12:07
  The place got appointed. The text is telling us that
• 12:09
  safety isn't found in comfort, it's found in total obedience,
• 12:13
  even if that means going to a hard place.
• 12:14
  So the command is clear. Go to the hills.
• 12:17
  Total separation, hard work, safety and Lot.
• 12:20
  Well, Lot argues. This is, for me, one of the most
• 12:23
  frustrating exchanges in the Bible.
• 12:25
  Lot looks at the angels who just dragged him to safety and says,
• 12:28
  Oh no, my Lord. He actually says no.
• 12:30
  He does. He starts bargaining.
• 12:31
  He says I cannot escape to the hills lest the disaster overtake
• 12:35
  me and I die. Wait a minute, he thinks, the
• 12:38
  disaster which God controls is going to catch him in the hills
• 12:42
  which God commanded him to go to.
• 12:44
  It's a rational fear. It's a functional atheism.
• 12:47
  He's essentially saying, God, you're strong enough to Get Me
• 12:50
  Out of the city, but you aren't strong enough to keep me safe in
• 12:52
  the mountains. He doesn't trust God's
• 12:55
  provision. But I want to play devil's
• 12:56
  advocate for a second here. Can we really blame him?
• 13:00
  He's an older man. He's got two daughters with him.
• 13:03
  The mountains are wild. There could be lions exposure,
• 13:06
  who knows what he wants a roof over his head.
• 13:09
  Isn't he just being practical? That is exactly how we justify
• 13:12
  it, isn't it? We call it practical, we call it
• 13:14
  prudent. But look at what he proposes.
• 13:17
  He points to a small city nearby and says, behold, this city is
• 13:20
  near enough to flee to, and it is a little one.
• 13:23
  He really emphasizes the size. It is a little one, the Hebrew.
• 13:27
  Word is Mitsar. It basically means insignificant
• 13:30
  or small. He asks.
• 13:32
  Is it not a little one? He's bargaining.
• 13:34
  Lord, I can't do the big obedience.
• 13:36
  Let me do this little partial obedience.
• 13:38
  It's just a small city. It's just a small compromise.
• 13:41
  Exactly. This is the psychology of what
• 13:43
  we might call Zoar spirituality. It's the desire to find a refuge
• 13:48
  that is culturally adjacent to Sodom.
• 13:51
  It's still a city, it still has walls, it still has comforts,
• 13:54
  but is technically safe from the fire.
• 13:56
  It's the Christian ish life, you know?
• 14:00
  I want to be saved, but I don't want to be weird.
• 14:02
  I don't want to be out in the wilderness with the religious
• 14:05
  fanatics in the hills. I want a nice, respectable,
• 14:08
  worldly life that just happens to not go to hell.
• 14:11
  That hits hard. We want the minimum standard of
• 14:13
  obedience that relieves our guilt but preserves our comfort.
• 14:16
  We want to negotiate terms with God.
• 14:18
  I'll give you my Sundays, but don't touch my finances or I'll
• 14:22
  stop doing X. But I'm going to keep watching Y
• 14:25
  is it not a little one? And usually when we try to
• 14:27
  bargain with God like that, we expect God to just smash us.
• 14:30
  We expect the Angel to say silence, fool to the hills.
• 14:33
  But he doesn't. And this is the twist in verse
• 14:35
  21. God says, I grant you this favor
• 14:37
  also, that I will not overthrow the city of which you have
• 14:40
  spoken. He says yes.
• 14:41
  He says yes. Does that mean Lot was right?
• 14:43
  Does that mean God changed his mind and realized, oh, actually
• 14:46
  the hills were a bad idea? Good call Lot.
• 14:49
  Absolutely not. We have to distinguish here
• 14:51
  between divine accommodation and divine endorsement.
• 14:54
  Unpacked that difference for me. Endorsement would mean God says
• 14:58
  that's a good plan, let's do that.
• 15:00
  Accommodation is God saying you are weak, your faith is tiny,
• 15:04
  you're terrified. So I will stoop down to your
• 15:06
  level and give you a place you can handle, even though it isn't
• 15:10
  the best place. It's like a parent letting a
• 15:12
  child sleep with a night light because they're scared of the
• 15:15
  dark. The parent knows there are no
• 15:17
  monsters, but they grant the request out of kindness.
• 15:20
  Yes, it's God being patient with a bruised Reed, to use Isaiah's
• 15:24
  language. But notice Lot's plan turns out
• 15:27
  to be terrible if you read the rest of the chapter.
• 15:29
  Lot eventually gets scared of Zor too.
• 15:32
  He leaves OR and goes to live in a cave in the hills anyway.
• 15:34
  So he ends up in the hills regardless, but in a much worse
• 15:38
  situation, a cave instead of God's appointed place.
• 15:42
  And that's where the terrible sin with his daughters happens.
• 15:45
  Zor was a trap. His wisdom was foolishness, but
• 15:49
  God in His mercy allowed him to go there to save him from
• 15:53
  immediate death. There's one more phrase in this
• 15:56
  text that we have to look at. It's in verse 22.
• 15:58
  The Angel says hurry, escape there for I can do nothing till
• 16:02
  you arrive there. I can do nothing.
• 16:03
  That stops you cold. This is God or or God's agent
• 16:06
  speaking. God can do anything.
• 16:08
  What does he mean I can do nothing?
• 16:10
  Is he powerless? He isn't powerless.
• 16:12
  He's bound, but he's bound by his own promise.
• 16:16
  This is what we call covenantal restraint.
• 16:18
  God had promised Abraham, and by extension Lot, that he would not
• 16:22
  destroy the righteous with the wicked.
• 16:24
  So as long as Lot is in the danger zone, the fire cannot
• 16:27
  fall. So the judgement is literally
• 16:29
  held back by the presence of this one lingering, complaining,
• 16:32
  compromising believer it is. The sequence is fixed.
• 16:35
  Mercy first, then wrath. The rescue must be complete
• 16:39
  before the judgment can begin. Our sources made a really
• 16:41
  interesting connection here to the New Testament, specifically
• 16:44
  to Thessalonians. Yes, Paul talks about the man of
• 16:47
  lawlessness and the coming judgment, but he mentions A
• 16:50
  restrainer something or someone that is holding back the full
• 16:54
  force of evil until the proper time.
• 16:55
  And a lot of theologians link that to the presence of the
• 16:59
  Church and the Holy Spirit in the world.
• 17:00
  Right. It's the idea that the days of
• 17:02
  Lot are a blueprint for the end times.
• 17:05
  Just as Lot had to be removed before Sodom could be
• 17:08
  incinerated, the church, the body of believers, acts as a dam
• 17:12
  holding back the final flood of judgement.
• 17:14
  So the fact that the world hasn't ended yet, the fact that
• 17:17
  we woke up this morning and the sun rose is actually evidence of
• 17:20
  God's patience. He's waiting for the rescue to
• 17:22
  be complete. The delay is mercy.
• 17:24
  But notice the text says hurry. The delay isn't infinite.
• 17:28
  Once Lot enters Zohar, the moment that door shuts, the sun
• 17:32
  rises and the fire falls. It's instantaneous.
• 17:35
  It really changes how you look at the news, doesn't it?
• 17:38
  You see all this chaos in the world and you wonder, why
• 17:39
  doesn't God stop it? But the answer from this text is
• 17:42
  he is gathering his people. He's grabbing hands.
• 17:45
  And he's saying I can do nothing to judge the world until you are
• 17:51
  safe. That is how much he values his
• 17:54
  covenant people. So we've covered a lot of ground
• 17:56
  here. We've talked about the paralysis
• 17:59
  of the will, the violence of the rescue, the danger of nostalgia,
• 18:02
  the compromise of Zarar, and the restraint of God.
• 18:06
  Let's try to bring this home for the listener.
• 18:08
  If I'm listening to this and I maybe see a little bit a lot in
• 18:11
  myself, maybe more than a little bit, what do I do with this?
• 18:15
  I think we can break the application down into three
• 18:17
  parts, head, heart and hands. Let's start with the head.
• 18:20
  What do we need to know? You need to settle the issue of
• 18:23
  how you are saved. You need to understand that
• 18:25
  salvation is monarchistic. If you're a Christian today, it
• 18:29
  is not because you were smarter than the people in Sodom.
• 18:31
  It's not because you ran faster. It's because God seized you.
• 18:35
  That kills. Pride doesn't.
• 18:36
  It it destroys pride completely. You can't boast about being
• 18:39
  dragged out of a burning building.
• 18:41
  You can only boast in the firemen.
• 18:42
  OK, what about the You need to interrogate the lingering.
• 18:46
  We all have a Sodom. We all have things in this world
• 18:48
  that we know we're destined for judgement.
• 18:50
  But we love them. We derive status from them.
• 18:53
  We find comfort in them. You need to ask yourself, why am
• 18:56
  I hesitating? What am I looking back at?
• 18:58
  That's the nostalgia piece breaking that emotional tie.
• 19:01
  Right. And finally, the hands.
• 19:03
  Or maybe the feet. Stop bargaining for Zohar.
• 19:06
  That's the hard one. It is.
• 19:07
  Stop trying to negotiate a version of Christianity that
• 19:10
  fits your comfort zone. Stop saying, is it not a little
• 19:12
  sin? God calls us to the mountains,
• 19:16
  to a life of distinct holy separation.
• 19:18
  It might be scary. It might be lonely, but it is
• 19:22
  the place of safety. It's a call to trust, to trust
• 19:25
  that the Hells are better than the city simply because God is
• 19:28
  there. Exactly.
• 19:29
  And the beautiful thing is, even when we fail at that, even when
• 19:32
  we run to Zohar like Lot did, God is still merciful.
• 19:35
  He is still patient. That is the take away for me.
• 19:37
  Lot is a mess. I mean, by the end of the story
• 19:39
  he is a disaster, but he is a saved disaster.
• 19:42
  He is the hero of the story, isn't Lot The hero is the Lord
• 19:46
  who remembers mercy. The Lord grabs the hand.
• 19:48
  I love that image, the sovereign grip.
• 19:51
  It's not about how tight I hold on to God, it's about how tight
• 19:53
  He holds on to me. And his grip?
• 19:55
  Never. Slips.
• 19:57
  Well, I think that is a good place to put a pin in it for
• 20:00
  today. There is so much more we could
• 20:02
  say, but I hope this gives you a new lens to read Genesis 19.
• 20:06
  It's not just a disaster movie, it's a story about a God who
• 20:10
  refuses to let his people go. Amen to that.
• 20:12
  Thank you for listening to Reformed Thinking.
• 20:14
  We'll catch you on the next deep dive.
• 20:16
  Until next time.