Great Outcry

Have you ever given much thought to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah? These are the two cities that God destroys because of their incredible sin. Before deciding what to do with the cities, God says these words in Genesis 18:20-21:

“Then the Lord said, ‘The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.’”

There are two things I get from this passage. First, if you are in a place of helplessness or abuse and are crying out to the Lord but feel as if your situation isn’t changing, remember that it was because of the outcry from these cities that God chose to personally investigate. God hears your cry and is sympathetic to your situation. God loves you and will not leave you in that place if you put your trust in him. And if you are away from him, even if you have a bitter attitude, I implore you to turn to him. Secondly, have you heard preachers say, “If God doesn’t punish America for all of its sins then he will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah?” I’ve heard that said. And I’m not saying that America isn’t in a bad place and getting worse every year, but I would argue that we aren’t as bad as Sodom and Gomorrah… at least not yet. If you don’t believe me, read the story. Men from all throughout the city saw two innocent foreign men enter and they gathered to forcefully break down the door and gang rape these men. Think about it… our word Sodomy comes from the story of Sodom. This was evil to the extreme, and as you read the whole story it gets even worse. Tell me, where in America do we condone that type of behavior? We don’t. I’m not saying that we are a Godly nation with Godly leaders, but to compare us to Sodom and Gomorrah is misleading at best. We need to continually pray for our leaders and lawmakers, so that we don’t go so far off the tracks that we ever consider condoning the public evils that we read about in this story.

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The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is an interesting one. In it, we learn that God is well aware of what’s happening on his planet and hears the cries of the abused and broken hearted. We also learn that the evil condition of those two cities is at a level that I haven’t seen in my lifetime; at least not in America. Rape is still against the law even if sodomy is not. Maybe their condition is more comparable to Hitler and the holocaust, or nations where worshipping Jesus can mean your death, but not America. Yes, evil happens in America, but in general, the inhabitants of our country do not condone it. And the level of public abuse that we read about in Sodom and Gomorrah are currently rejected in the United States. So, comparing our nation to those cities, yes, even Las Vegas, the acclaimed “sin city”, in my opinion, does not compare to the biblical account of those two cities.

Rule Over It

I’m in the process of reading through the Bible again. And as I began, a verse from Genesis 4:7 got my attention. It says:

“If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.”

Another version says, “but you must rule over it”. Even as early as the days of Cain and Abel, God explains about sin. If it were easy to control our sinful desires, most everyone would be sin free. But the truth is that it isn’t easy, especially for those of us who are being mastered by it. God tells Cain that he must master, or rule over, sin; that it is crouching at his door and that it desires to have him. Although it isn’t easy to rule over sin, at least we know where it is. It is at our door step. I believe there is truth to the phrase, “knowing is half the battle”. Sin shouldn’t always take us by surprise. If we know where it is, we should be able to prepare for it. And if we can prepare for it, we should be able to rule over it. I don’t believe that we can, or even have to, do this on our own. The Holy Spirit is there to help us every step of the way.

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God tells Cain that sin is crouching at his door, that it desires to have him, but that he must master, or rule over, it. I believe this is a verse that we can apply to our lives as well. Right after this verse we read that Cain kills Abel out of envy. Let us not have these words fall on deaf ears, but let’s take them to heart. God wouldn’t tell us that we must rule over sin if it weren’t possible. Even if it feels impossible through your own efforts, remember another biblical truth; that nothing is impossible with God. I encourage you to pray to him about any sin that has mastered you. The Holy Spirit can help turn the tables if you really want things to be different.

Our Walk

Have you stopped to consider how your walk with the Lord is going? Personally, I think our walk with Christ should be on our minds all of the time. It shouldn’t be something we hit the pause button on, or turn off when we leave church. It is an ongoing relationship with the creator that starts when we give our lives to him and are born again, all the way until the day we die. Abraham knew that because God specifically reminds him in Genesis chapter 17 verse 1 which says:

"When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, 'I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless.'”

God tells him this right before he makes that all important covenant with him, promising that he’d be the father of many nations, and changing his name from Abram to Abraham. But even at ninety-nine God tells him to walk before him and to be blameless. How is your walk? It doesn’t matter how old you are; that is always a question we should ask ourselves. I challenge you to reflect on what God tells Abraham. “Walk before me and be blameless”. Blameless doesn’t equate to sinless. But in as far as it is possible with us, we are to strive to have our consciences clear before him; to make every effort to obey his commands in such a way that we can’t find blame in our walk and are free of guilt.

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God said to Abraham, “walk before me and be blameless.” That should be our ultimate goal as well; to obey his commands in such a way that we are guilt free, or blameless. By obeying his commands, we show that we love him. Jesus said it himself, “if you love me, you will keep my commands”. But we are still human and we still fall. And if we do, he has an answer for that as well, to repent and to turn away from our sins. So, I encourage you to be ever mindful of your walk. Your relationship to and with Jesus is your identity. And just like our earthly family, we can never not be our parent’s child or a brother or sister to our brother or sister. That is who we are, and we never forget it. Likewise, we should always be mindful of our relationship and our walk with Christ.

Too Hard?

I love being remind of who God is. He is a powerful, loving and sovereign God. Nothing is impossible for Him and nothing happens without His notice. I was reading Genesis the other day where the Lord asked Abraham a question that I think we need to ask ourselves every now and again. In Chapter 18 verse 14 the Lord says:

"Is anything too hard for the Lord? I will return to you at the appointed time next year and Sarah will have a son."

I like that… “Is anything too hard for the Lord” - implying that no, nothing is too difficult for our God. Sarah was 90 years old when she gave birth to Isaac. 90! This, of course, would’ve been impossible to accomplish by human effort. Even today, with all of our technological advancements, I would still argue that this is impossible. But God did it. He did it because this is how he wanted things to play out. He could’ve allowed her to get pregnant when she was younger, but that wasn’t his plan. He chose the road that was impossible for nature to accomplish. And because of that, we are able to learn a huge lesson here. We learned that nothing, hear me now - absolutely NOTHING is too hard for our Lord.

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Is anything too hard for the Lord? The answer is clearly, “no”. But sometimes we need to be reminded of that fact, because we’re surrounded by the natural world 24/7 where this truth is easy to forget. God chose to have Sarah become pregnant in her old age, a miracle that was played out for Abraham to experience and for us to read about. I hope it encourages you if, and when, you find yourself in an impossible situation. God is still in the business of performing miracles. He does it for His glory, he does it for our benefit, and he proves time and time again that there is nothing too hard for the Lord. This is the same God who raised people from the dead, made the sun stand still, and ordered 10 incredible plagues to take place in Egypt. He is the God we pray to. He is the God of the impossible.

Creationism

I recently visited Kentucky to see the Creation Museum, and I loved it. If you get a chance, I certainly recommend that you check it out. It explains why the biblical account of creation is not only biblically accurate, but scientifically accurate. The bible is very clear. It says in Genesis 1:1: 

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

Though I loved my time at the creation museum, there is one argument that I didn’t hear for creation over evolution as it pertains to science. And that is that our God is a God of order. He created the laws of physics, time, nature and all of science. It is because of that order that scientists can predict and replicate their experiments. The evolutionist theory that we evolved from molecules suggests that our existence is random and chaotic, not orderly. It would suggest that if a species of humans lived exclusively in a forest that over the years they would develop say an extra arm to better climb trees, or if they lived on an island, they might develop gills to swim to the mainland. Our world would be a hodgepodge of races like something you might see on Star Trek, but it’s not because our God is a God of order.

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“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” The account of creation - not evolution - is true. They can’t both be right because they contradict each other. God created us in his image. We were fully man and woman at the get-go. We didn’t evolve from goo, and the world wasn’t created by a random act. When God finished creating the universe, our world and everything in it, he said that it was good. So I encourage you to disregard what secular textbooks teach about evolution. None of us were around to make such an assumption. But God was, and his word clearly explains where we came from.