20240630_IshmailToSarahDeath

[0:01] Father, thank you very much for gathering us together. We thank you most of all for the wonderful grace that you've extended to us. That because of what you did by becoming flesh and living among men and then taking our sin upon you at the cross, you nailed the law to the cross, all the ordinances and laws, have been taken care of and you have extended to us salvation by grace.

[0:39] And we are thankful for that. That all we need to do is believe in you and you save us. And you say you do so forever.

[0:52] And now, Lord, we have brothers and sisters who are suffering physically. And you know every sparrow that falls and every hair that drops.

[1:06] I don't understand it. But this has not escaped you. And, Lord, we pray for strength, for healings, for encouragement.

[1:19] Whatever is in your will, we are thankful for those that we are praying for, Bruce and Holly and Melissa, that they are your children and they are safe in your hand.

[1:34] Nevertheless, we walk in the flesh right now and these days are hard. So I pray for strength, please, and grace and mercies.

[1:48] Now, as we look into your word, please guide our thoughts and our hearts. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. All right.

[1:58] We left last week with Lot fleeing. He came to Sodom with great wealth.

[2:11] He's leaving with nothing, basically. Two daughters. His wife, with whom he fled, would have been safe, but she looked with longing or looked with approbation back upon Sodom.

[2:31] And she became a pillar of salt. You know, when I was in Sunday school as a child, we were taught lots of life looked back.

[2:44] She turned around and became a pillar of salt. And one of my friends held up his hands and he said, My mom was in the parking lot and she looked back and turned into a Chevy.

[2:58] I'm sorry about that. But, so here he is. Nevertheless, we pick up here.

[3:10] Let's pick up then with Genesis chapter 19 with verse 27. Read especially those three verses, 27 through 29.

[3:24] We'll get a picture. We're back with Abraham now. To read them aloud?

[3:50] They could look them up. I would suggest we look them up anyway. Just to make sure that, you know, I'm fact checked. Okay.

[4:04] You've read verses 27 through 29 especially. Maybe a little further. That's fine. Now, it begins out, Abraham went to the place where he stood before the Lord.

[4:15] Where is that? It's not in the verse. It's in previous verses.

[4:27] This is where God left him. Remember when Abraham's saying, Well, what if there are 50 righteous? You know, this is where they tarried.

[4:37] So Abraham went to the place where he stood before the Lord. What did he do there? He looked down toward the plain.

[4:53] Yeah. He looked toward the plain. What did he see? What do you think he was, Did he look to see if there were 10 righteous persons in Sodom?

[5:09] I don't know. Well, what did he see then? Okay.

[5:22] Smoke as though it was from a furnace. This is a big deal. This is, you know, it's really rising. The picture I have, I forget how many years ago, you all remember it.

[5:37] I forget now. I was in St. Paris in the afternoon, walked out of the classroom, or walked out of the barn, and I saw this column of black smoke rising.

[5:51] It was RH holders down there where black horse tile used to be. You could see that from St. Paris. Well, Abraham saw the plain like a furnace.

[6:10] The smoke arising. Now, in any case, Abraham is not going to go to look for Lot.

[6:24] You remember when the guy came to him and said, Hey, Chedorlamer and all these kings came through, and they took all these prisoners, and Lot was one of the prisoners they took, and ran off with him.

[6:45] Abraham mounted up the armed men and his servants, his servants, and off he went, got him. He's not going to go look for Lot this time.

[6:58] We have no record of that. In fact, we have no record that Abraham ever hears about Lot again. We will hear a little bit about him, but we have no record that Abraham does.

[7:11] So, you know what he saw. What does it say?

[7:25] God remembered Abraham. God remembered Abraham. What's the significance in there? What's in that verse? Anybody righteous could be saved.

[7:39] That's what Abraham wanted. So, God was kind of remembering Abraham's desires for innocent people, righteous people from that community.

[7:52] Okay, God remembered because of Abraham, and this, he's going to use similar, he's going to use similar things all throughout Israel's history.

[8:06] Clear up to when they go into captivity, he'll say to them, it's because I am the Lord and I do not change that you sons of Jacob are not destroyed.

[8:20] Because he made an oath to Abraham. So, here he is and it says God remembered Abraham so he did what?

[8:36] He brought Lot out. He brought Lot out. The angel actually took hold of his arm, you remember, and pulled him out of the city. Said, get out of here.

[8:48] Get out of here. So, where did it, where is Lot headed for? Well, he was supposed to be going to the mountains, but he headed for some town Okay, he headed for Zohar.

[9:02] Zohar, or Zohar. Okay, now, let's keep going with 30 through 35, especially, and once again, once again, we get into difficult situation, difficult situation, don't we?

[9:29] So, Lot and his daughters feared to stay in the town. So, he went on to the mountain to be a caveman.

[9:42] Lot's daughters then see themselves as maybe said in a desperate situation.

[9:55] What do they, how do they see their situation as desperate? They have no husbands. They couldn't have children. Keep going. There is no man on earth to what?

[10:20] I mean, if we're going to understand it, we do need to get the detail, don't we? There's no man. Now, were there no men on earth? There were men.

[10:32] But, for them, in their situation, the way they saw it, there was no one left that would marry them.

[10:45] Now, do I ever think that way?

[10:59] Do I ever think this situation is hopeless. There's nothing for it but to do this, this thing.

[11:10] Roger knows I do. That's the nature of man, isn't it?

[11:26] And let's get it even broader. I know what God's word says, but my case is, huh?

[11:37] My case is different. No one has ever been in my situation. So, why did God write to the Corinthians through the Apostle Paul, there is no temptation that is taking you but such as is common to man.

[12:05] Now, I know it's a different dispensation, but the principle crosses God's word is true. And my temptation back to early Genesis, the first chapter or the third chapter of Genesis, the first and original temptation is to doubt the veracity of God.

[12:30] What has God actually said? God's God's veracity to doubting his character to doubting his faithfulness.

[12:52] And that's part of the reason that we are called, as a church, we are called together, together, for encouragement, for edification, for strengthening.

[13:07] It's not that God's not sufficient, he is, but he also calls us into a social situation with other believers to provide encouragement and strength because the temptations are always going to be there.

[13:27] The temptations are always going to be there to doubt what God says. Nevertheless, they didn't necessarily have direct revelation from God. I'm not trying to stretch this out of its context.

[13:41] But these women see, they're young women, they've been betrothed, they're no longer betrothed. Their husbands are burned.

[13:55] They're ashes now. And they say there's no man to come in to us. Now, it may be, it's possible that part of their frustration is they no longer have a dowry, do they?

[14:11] There's nothing. I don't want to marry her, there's no money coming with it. Which was common in that culture at that time.

[14:23] So, nevertheless, then, now we get to a less than pretty part. What do they decide to do about their situation?

[14:36] it? Yeah. Yeah. Now, you ever notice that the scripture does not say that drinking alcohol is wrong.

[15:00] it's not. But, it does say moderate yourself, self-control.

[15:12] Because, have you ever noticed bad things often happen when alcohol, too much alcohol gets involved, don't they? well, and, of course, the more drinks you take, the less conscious and the less control you have of your behavior.

[15:54] But, even taking one drink affects your thinking ability to make decisions, good or bad. So, therefore, you are drunk at one drink.

[16:05] I don't know about that, Joe. Well, although the Lord, what was the first, what was the first recorded miracle?

[16:18] Yeah, he turned the baptistry into wine. The water basins they used were for the water of purification, weren't they?

[16:33] They were baptismal waters. But, I'm not trying to argue that. You still could.

[16:53] These dug wells, they are easily polluted, and they get polluted, and you die from it, and, therefore, by drinking wine, you had a better chance of living than drinking water.

[17:04] I will have to say this, Joe. You have to be careful with that. Where did Jesus talk to the Samaritan woman? What was she doing? She was drawing drinking water.

[17:19] Abraham dug wells, everybody dug wells. Yes, my father got, my father when he was five years old got typhoid poisoning from a shallow well, hand dug well.

[17:30] I know that, but, that's not a scriptural argument for teetotaling. I have to be careful with that. I have to be careful with that because the scripture, in fact, Jesus said, look, John the Baptist came refraining, he was a teetotaler, and he didn't eat meat, and you called him, you said he had a demon.

[17:53] The son of man came eating and drinking, and you call him a wine bibber and a glutton. So, I, just to keep them in context, but we are called, we are called, to control.

[18:12] The, the point of it is, don't, you know, you can't control yourself, after you started to drink one or two drinks, you cannot control yourself the way you could or should.

[18:26] That should be known. You just have to give it up the ability to control yourself the way you could before you started to drink. Okay. Know that. If you lose control and that the God gave you the control he gave you, that is a sin.

[18:45] Okay. So, we, take it in context, you know, there's, there are full arguments about that.

[18:56] We are not to be gluttonous, we are not, in the church, it's okay if I'm a glutton, it's not okay if I'm a drunkard.

[19:09] Yet, they are combined. But, so, Paul did tell Timothy, all I'm saying here is, the scripture does not deny that.

[19:27] In fact, in, in fact, well, I'm not, I'm not going to continue that line. So, there are services that were not up to date back then.

[19:39] So, certain places where it was thin, they couldn't get away with it. Other places where there was up in their do-know-one and how, it depends on the situation.

[19:53] I had six parents in college, first time I had a drunk. I did not get drunk, but I did watch everybody else get drunk. I stopped. It wasn't. Well, see, he says he wasn't drunk.

[20:04] Nobody can judge when you're drunk or not. That's just it. Okay, the point, the point of this is not the consumption of the alcohol. The point of this is what's going to come. The point of this is what's going to come.

[20:18] The, the idea of the consumption of alcohol is moderation. That, that is the, what the scripture says. It says moderate is okay.

[20:30] It doesn't say you need to drink. It doesn't say you need to not drink. My grandmother, for instance, was on the women's temperance union. Unfortunately, that got into the church and started building a false doctrine.

[20:50] Now, doctrine is the revealed word of God, not my ideas about it. So, I have to be careful with that and make a difference.

[21:03] So, what happens then? They get him drunk, they have intercourse, and then they get, right, they get pregnant, and they have children.

[21:17] Now, at the end of chapter 19, we will no longer hear about Lot. This is the end of what we hear about Lot.

[21:35] Well, that's not, he will be mentioned by Peter, but we will not hear any more historical fact about Lot.

[21:51] What we do hear, though, is about his grandchildren. Who are the grandchildren? The Moabites and the Ammonites.

[22:08] Now, we will hear about them. By the way, despite Lot's flawed character, in 2 Peter chapter 2, we will see that Peter writes, when he's saying, look, be settled, the Lord knows how to save the righteous from eternal judgment, is basically from the damnation of the whole world.

[22:49] I'm assuming that some people were saying, are we who believe in Jesus Christ going to be destroyed with the rest of the world?

[23:02] God knows how to make that separation, and he uses Lot as one of the examples.

[23:15] The other example is Noah. So, he uses Lot as an example, and he does say his righteous soul was vexed daily by the unlawful deeds or the misbehavior of those around him.

[23:32] So, I know you've never felt that way. When you look at the news, or, for crying out loud, if you pull up to a stop sign or a stoplight, and the person next to you decides that they're going to have their radio serenade you, so they roll the window down, and the obscenity just flows into your car, and you say, man, I can't believe that this is happening.

[24:10] You know how you feel then? That's what he's talking about, isn't it? So, yes. Well, yeah, that's even more affectation, isn't it?

[24:36] So, the Moabites and the Ammonites, what do you know about them? Okay, we're going to get in our time machine, we're going to go, when the children of Israel are coming out, have come out of Egypt, they're crossing toward, they're going toward Canaan, God's going to talk to them, through Moses, in Deuteronomy chapter two.

[25:13] In Deuteronomy chapter two, God tells Moses, don't distress the Moabites, neither contend with them. I will not give you their land as a possession.

[25:30] You don't get Sare, because I have, or R, I have given R to the children of Lot for a possession.

[25:41] So, they were not allowed to distress Moab. Now, in verse 16 of Deuteronomy 2, it says that when all the men of war, now they've sojourned in the desert, till a whole generation of the men of war who refused to enter Canaan have died.

[26:06] Now it's time to go in. Now, when all the men of war were consumed and dead from among the people, the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, you are to pass over through our, the coast of Moab this day.

[26:28] And when you come nigh against the children of Ammon, distress them not, nor meddle with them, I will not give thee the land for your possession, because I have given it to the children of Lot.

[26:44] They were not allowed to distress the Moabites going into Canaan. Now, Moab, however, hired Balaam to curse Israel.

[27:00] Now, did Balaam curse them? did Balaam curse them? No. He wasn't allowed. God wouldn't let him.

[27:12] In fact, he blessed them. And the king of Moab said, what's this business? And Balaam said, I tried to do it, but I told you that I couldn't say anything that God didn't let me say.

[27:26] So, then Balaam talked to Balak and he gave him some advice. You remember what the advice was?

[27:38] I can't curse Israel for you. God won't let me. But I'll tell you what. You seduce them. Not a week of them.

[27:53] And that's what happened. So, Israel fell into idolatry because they committed whoredom with the daughters of Moab. That's where this is going.

[28:07] Then, eventually, in the book of Judges, we see it a lot, the Moabites and the Ammonites become, they start to oppress Israel.

[28:21] So, they come in and start to oppress Israel. And, God, in the judgment, remember, in Judges, you get almost, you almost get this 40-year cycle.

[28:41] You get a generational cycle. One generation, goat falls, deserts the Lord.

[28:52] The next, God raises up a judge. It's a picture of what God will do ultimately. But, it's also, well, it's not a picture of your life in Romans chapter seven, but, you know someone whose picture it is.

[29:16] Eh, you know, by the way, that whole thing of going back into recurring sins, there, there is, there is an adage, an old guy once told me, he said, you know, if you fall into the same ditch every night on the way home, you better either fill the ditch in or get a new way home.

[29:47] You know, there's some, there's some wisdom in that, isn't there? I better change my habits, or protect myself from the habit.

[29:59] That's, by the way, why the apostle says, young man, flee youthful lust. You know, there, some people say, well, my kids, my children need to learn how to stand up and fight.

[30:13] That's true, but there's a time to run. There's a time to flee the lust, because sometimes the brain's not working anyway.

[30:32] Joseph fled, but, okay, back to the, back to the point, the last one, I'll, by the way, one Moabitess was different.

[30:47] Who? Ruth. That wonderful line, your people are going to be my people.

[30:59] Your God will be my God. and God put Ruth in the lineage of David and Jesus our Christ.

[31:17] That's pretty amazing. Well, that's wonderful. That's wonderful. Two Gentiles, by the way, were placed into that, and they came from pagan societies that were to be destroyed.

[31:29] We will see that. Now, even though the last thing we'll mention is from Ezekiel, which is the last mentioning of Moab and Ammon.

[31:43] And in Ezekiel, God says, if you want to check it, it's Ezekiel chapter 25. basically, we're going to run through it quickly.

[32:00] God says to them, and he says this both to Ammon and to Moab through the prophet. He says, speak to them, saying, thus saith the Lord, because Israel and Judah disobeyed me, and I raised up Babylon and Assyria to punish them, you were happy about it.

[32:32] You clapped your hands at their destruction. He said, it's good that this happened. And he said, because of that, I'm going to wipe you off the face of the earth, and your name will never be remembered.

[32:48] That's in the early verses of Ezekiel. Now, by the way, God's the one that raised up Babylon.

[32:59] God's the one that raised up Assyria. But he said, you're not to be happy about what I'm doing. That's like me laughing when Rodney got spanked.

[33:11] Only exaggerated multiple times. Now, not that I ever did that, of course. but he said, you're not, I'll take care of the punishment, but you're not to say, good for them.

[33:32] I'm glad they got theirs. So, that concludes chapter 19. It also concludes anything we're going to hear about Lot or his family thereafter, as far as historical, other than what happens with Ammonites and Moabites later on.

[33:56] But, we're not going to get to that. Erd. I don't think I'm going to launch into chapter 20 at this point, but we will pick up chapter 20, God willing, next week.

[34:12] We only have about five minutes to go, unless you insist, but I think it will be easier to get the whole roll if we just pick that up next week.

[34:25] Have a great week. All right.