Hey friends, welcome back.
Thanks for being with us this Thursday on a
beautiful day as we continued through the book of Genesis.
Not a difficult story,
but an interesting story,
maybe some difficulty in it in terms
of how it’s been used in the church.
We’re looking today at the judgment that is leveled against Sodom and Gomorrah.
Remember that Abraham
has hosted three angels,
one of which appears to have been God himself.
Now two of those angels go on to Sodom.
God has announced his plan to go and evaluate to judge Sodom to see if there will be punishment.
Abram has bargained with God.
We saw that story yesterday.
Today we see what happens when they arrive.
In the interest of time, we won’t
read all of this verbatim,
but when they arrive,
again, a lot like Abraham did before him,
makes a very public show of hospitality.
He’s very gracious.
He goes and he receives them.
He says, “Come to my house,
wash your feet, get some food, get some rest.”
They say, “We plan to spend the night in the square.”
Then it says,
“He urged them strongly.”
It has often been assumed that part of what Lot understands himself to be doing here is
protecting them.
In other words,
he has concern for them if they stay out
in the public square overnight,
which is part of the point that we’ll get to in a minute.
The underlying point, I think,
again, Michael, is that we see a very high valuation of hospitality
and of receiving the stranger and the guest.
Yeah. You see that.
It needs noted, once again, that that is in
a real comparison to Abraham’s action.
It makes the corresponding negative that we’re going to discover happens by the other people
in that town that much more stark.
In other words, in the midst of generous hospitality,
you see very quickly how substantial the aggression
is of these other people who are the opposite of that.
You’re seeing a connection between the story that comes before and now an intensification
of the ramifications of that in this story.
Right.
And we see it maybe especially clearly in verse 3,
“He made them a feast.”
He didn’t just feed them.
He made them a feast.
And then we move to verse 4 by contrast,
“But before they lay down the men of the city,
the men of Sodom,
both young and old,
all the people to the last man,
surrounded the house.
And they called to Lot,
‘Where are the men who came to you tonight?
Bring them out to us that we may know them.’”
A couple of things.
We’ve seen this kind of language before.
Look at the…
This is in the text,
in the language, this is called intensification.
So listen to these intensifiers.
The men of the city,
the men of Sodom,
both the young and the old,
all the people to the
last man.
So no exceptions.
This is the Bible’s way.
When the Bible tells you something three or four times,
it wants you not to miss it.
It wants to make sure that you’re aware of that.
And they say, “Come out that we may know them.”
And we’ve seen this language before when Adam knew his wife
Eve.
So this is a sexually charged word.
This isn’t,
“We want to get to know them.”
This is,
“We want to be physical with them.
We want to take them.
We want to be with them.”
So Lot goes out.
He says, “I beg you, brothers,
do not act so wickedly.”
Let’s stop there, Michael.
Let’s sort of set that stage.
So clearly,
the idea of sexuality,
and particularly the idea of rape really,
hangs over this text.
And it has often been viewed through that lens.
And without question,
that is part of what’s happening here.
The idea of
a homosexual forced relationship on these men is the Bible’s way of saying
how bad things are in Sodom,
that a stranger isn’t safe there without the threat of the
entire male population coming to take them by force.
The other part, though,
that I think, yes, that’s in the text,
but because it’s in the
text and because it has been a debated and hot-button issue,
we miss that underlying
that is this idea of hospitality.
That these,
throughout the Old Testament,
we’re going to see God call the people to
be gracious to the stranger,
to feed those who don’t have a home,
to welcome the alien and the outsider.
And how they treat that person will be used as a litmus test, as a bar,
for how faithful they are.
And this is the exact opposite of everything that that stands for.
This is a reversal of what God wants.
Here,
the people who are vulnerable are not cared for.
They are threatened, and they’re in danger.
So the danger of reading texts like this is that we insert our own questions into the
text.
And when we do so,
we end up with some of these debates that Clint is talking about.
We end up talking about,
well, what is the nature of the actual sinful act at play here, as opposed to,
I think Clint is helpfully pointing us towards—and that is,
what is the narrative throughline?
And I sort of teased this at the end of our conversation yesterday.
This story intentionally follows the story that came before it.
And as we look at the extravagant hospitality of Abraham—in fact,
Abraham says, “Let me give you some cakes.”
It turns out he’s giving them a feast.
He’s giving them the fatted calf.
When we zoom in here on Lot,
same thing.
It literally says he made them a feast, and they ate.
The hospitality here that is in play is a place of protection and care for the other.
We’re about to see this troubled greatly when we move on to the next section,
and we see how Lot responds to this threat to his guests.
Because as modern people,
we’re going to look at this,
and we’re going to say,
“Wow,
your response to this is no better than the response of this entire rabid city.”
Unless you look at it from the lens of the text—and the lens of the text is that fundamentally,
when humanity breaks down,
when violence becomes the bond between God’s created order,
it no longer lives within the covenantal bounds of God’s plan.
And at that point,
you have reached Sodom’s level,
where every man, not a single person in the town,
save Lot,
is willing to act humanly towards these guests.
And that is this depiction of when it has gone completely off the rails.
We fixate on the thing that is rightly and wrongly in the middle of our interpretive
lens.
I mean, there’s a sense in which it’s good to return to these texts with new eyes.
There’s a sense, though, where you might miss that the substantial detraction here is only
going to get worse as we go on to the story.
It’s not just about the sexual nature of this crime.
It’s actually about the extent to which these individuals are willing to do harm to their neighbor.
Yeah, it’s interesting.
Historically, we have been tempted to make this a text about homosexuality.
Homosexuality is clearly a part of the text,
but so is rape.
We’ve never treated this as a rape story.
We’ve never treated this as a hospitality story,
which is also clearly part of their crime.
We have singled out one aspect of that.
And while this story clearly includes the theme of homosexuality,
it’s not about homosexuality.
And to make that the main point,
I think, is really to run the risk of missing the point,
which is that these people can’t be trusted to act humanely,
that violence and lust and
sexuality is running rampant in Sodom.
And in this story alone,
we have multiple examples of it.
Now, whether or not we continue to see examples of it is up for debate.
This next part of the story is very,
very hard to read.
It’s very hard to hear.
True.
Verse 6, Lot went out the door to the men,
shut the door after him,
and said, “I beg you, brothers,
do not act wickedly.
Look,
I have two daughters who have not yet known a man.
Let me bring them out to you,
and do to them as you please.
But do nothing to these men,
for they have come under the shelter of my roof.”
But they said,
“Stand back.” They said, “This fellow came here as an alien and would play the judge.
Now we will deal worse with you than with them.”
And they pressed hard against the man lot and came near the door to break it down.
Now,
the idea of offering his own children to sort of appease this crowd,
and particularly that phrase,
“You can do what you will with them.” And yes,
we can conceptually know that women are property,
that daughters and wives are essentially treated as things.
We can talk about the ways in which that male-dominated culture creates a subclass
of society that women occupy.
We could talk about Lot being willing to suffer personally,
and even more so to let
his children suffer personally,
than to break hospitality.
They are under the shelter of my roof.
I would give up my own family before I’d break those vows.
Now, that rings a little hollow in our ears because Lot doesn’t offer himself.
He offers his daughters.
There’s nothing that I think we can explain that will somehow
click in a way
that makes this story palatable.
This is a disturbing story,
and it’s meant to be.
It is meant to show the wickedness of Sodom,
the fallenness of humanity,
and, you know,
arguably Lot is or isn’t exempt from that.
It’s possible that part of what we are seeing is Lot’s own role in this evil,
this thing that’s happening here in Sodom.
It’s very hard to know what to do with this because it is so out of our context,
and it is so bound in its own time and place.
It’s a rough part of the story.
So two very quick
things here.
First of all,
I think that caution to not make this story one thing when it’s many things is important.
Don’t make this story only about homosexuality because ultimately this next sin that we see being perpetrated is not homosexuality.
It’s rampant rape.
It’s a horrible kind of exploitation of these young women.
At that point, you see that this isn’t about one particular form of violence.
It’s actually implicating all of them.
It’s to say that this whole culture has gone to the point of lasciviousness
beyond the ability to imagine.
And that connects to my point.
Number two,
I want to just point out,
remember that a beginning trope that we had at the beginning of the Abraham story
where the Lord says that I want to go see with my own eyes,
right?
This idea I want to get down there in the dirt.
I want to see it as it is that kind of investigative journalism almost.
This is exactly the dirtiest,
muckiest.
This is the kind of thing that you expect to find at the worst place of human engagement.
And this is why Sodom gets the reputation it does throughout all of scripture.
It’s not because of any one particular shocking sin.
I want to be clear,
it’s because of all of them.
It’s because they have broke down at the fundamental level of those who live as creatures made in God’s image.
The image of God is not seen here.
And in fact, I think you’re right to point out,
I’m doing a little bit of interpretation here beyond the text.
So just be clear.
But there is a sense in which Lot lives in a culture and society that is so depraved that his own actions and choices in response to it
are themselves implicated in the sin,
right?
It’s the fact that he lives in this place surrounded by these people,
puts him in a position where there is no recourse other than to offer a horrible,
despicable,
unacceptable thing.
And so that is really writ large.
This question that we came into this text with how many righteous people are in Sodom becomes a very complicated nuance question because of the ubiquity of the
sheer profanity in this place.
Yeah,
this isn’t a—well,
I don’t know, Michael.
In one sense, this is a modern story because it very much delves into the darkness that lives in the human heart and into the crowd mentality,
the kind of thing that happens when people are intent on being led by their inner sin.
On the other hand,
this is a very ancient story with patterns and codes and layers that simply don’t make sense to us.
And I think most of us find most of this story distasteful at best.
But again,
I would say that’s intentional,
that the author hopes to deliver us at the end of this narrative of understanding why it is that God is about to erase Sodom and Gomorrah from the face of the earth,
that their punishment is justly deserved and that in the righteousness of God,
this kind of wickedness won’t stand.
And that’s where we’ll go next—sorry, two weeks,
a week from Monday.
We’ll pick back up here as we see the conclusion of this story and some of the aftermath,
which doesn’t get a lot better in the near future.
I’m just going to warn you,
this is a tough place to end a week.
Right before Thanksgiving.
Yeah.
But yeah, an interesting story,
a difficult story, a story with a long history in the church of—we have used this story in lots of ways,
some of them not always helpful to deeper conversations.
Maybe my last comment here is just a little bit of a teaser of maybe what might come.
We’ve so far read this story as if Lot is advocating for the safety of these men.
We’re going to discover that these men have far more power than what was assumed in this story.
And that it brings an interesting twist to the story that in the same way that God says,
“I’m going to go see with my own eyes what’s happening there.”
What we see in verse 11 is that there’s more spiritual forces and power present here than what you just assume in the story that came before it.
I’m only complexifying the story to say,
for all of its distasteful nature,
for all of our struggle to engage with an ancient text with themes that are reprehensible in so many ways,
if we’re willing to sit and listen to the text,
it has much more layers to teach us.
And so do join us.
This is a tough spot to stop as we celebrate Thanksgiving.
But it’s instructive, and when we pick it up,
I hope you’ll find it that way.
Yeah, you all have a great week.
Have a great Thanksgiving.