06/23/2024 Fire and Brimstone [Genesis 19:23-29]
[Sermon Transcript]
The following transcript is a written record of a spoken sermon delivered at Mayflower Church. This document is provided for personal study, reflection, and educational use. It may not capture the full dynamic and flow of the live sermon and might have been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
Hear the word of the Lord from Genesis 19 verses 23 to 29.
The sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zohar. Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven. And he overthrew those cities and all the valley and all the inhabitants of the cities and what grew on the ground. But Lot's wife behind him looked back and she became a pillar of salt.
And Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord. And he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the valley. And he looked, and behold, the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace. So it was that when God destroyed the cities of the valley, God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow when he overthrew the cities in which Lot had lived.
It's the word of the Lord this morning. If you would bow your heads and pray with me, the title of this morning's sermon, as you can probably tell, is, because you have it right in front of you, is Fire and Brimstone. Anybody ever have a sense of a positive feeling about fire and brimstone? What comes to your mind when you think of fire and brimstone? Hell.
Blacksmiths, yeah, that's just true. Blacksmiths would be a part of that. But fire and brimstone, I often think of a preacher who preaches with fire and brimstone. It's supposed to be something, You know, just preaching the distinction between heaven and hell. This morning, we're gonna see very much a similar thing, a distinction between heaven and hell. But we need the work of the Spirit to help us to understand it and apply it to our hearts. And so I would like to open this morning.
A prayer of illumination as I normally do, but using words that were penned by Saint Augustine in the fifth century. Just such a beautiful call to God for him to work salvation in our hearts. Bow your heads with me and hear this prayer. Make it your own as well. It's mine and it's what I hope we can receive from the Lord this morning as we study his word together.
Almighty God, we pray that You would enter our hearts and so fill us with Your love that forsaking all evil desires, we may embrace You, our only good. Show to us for Your mercy's sake, O Lord our God, what You are to us. Say to our souls, I am your salvation. So speak that we may hear. Our hearts are before You. Open our ears. Let us hasten after Your voice and take hold of You.
We ask, Lord, that You would show us Yourself in Your Word today and that You would apply Your gospel to our hearts. We ask all of this in Jesus' name and all of God's people said, AMEN
It's hard to put a positive spin on the destruction of a city. But there is somewhat of a positive spin if you want to use that kind of language. What we can receive from this text this morning that's positive, meaning in the surest sense, is that God is faithful in his judgment.
We often approach this story, and even as I use the word story, we have different understandings of the meaning of the word story. If you're going to sit down at night and tell your children a story, it most likely is not a historical account of the destruction of a city and thousands of people.
We call this a story. It's not a story in the sense that it is something that is made up, that is fiction. It's an account of something that happened in history. And if you doubted that, I just want to give you a quote.
As we approach this text this morning, I want you to consider this quote by Stephen Collins from Biblical Archaeology Review. This is an article that came out, this is from an article that came out in, I think, 2017 (it was 2013), but it has caused controversy after controversy. And I think the reason why is because it's not just dead in the water, it's because there's something to what he's found in the valley of the Dead Sea. And it's a place called Tel El Hamam.
And that word tall is pronounced tell. So this is what it says. It says across Tall el-Hammam, archaeologists found widespread evidence of an intense conflagration that left the middle Bronze Age city in ruins. A conflagration is a fire.
They found scorched foundations and floors buried under nearly three feet of dark gray ash, as well as dozens of pottery sherds covered with a frothy, melted surface. The glassy appearance indicates that they were briefly exposed to temperatures well in excess of 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, the approximate heat of volcanic magma.
Such evidence suggests the city and its environs were catastrophically destroyed in a sudden and extreme conflagration.
Now, something else that Collins mentions in other parts of the article, they've pulled up pieces of pottery that initially he saw what looked like a glaze over the pottery, and it was that frothy surface that he's talking about. He was disappointed because the layer that they were in, he expected to be a middle Bronze Age layer, but glazed pottery didn't come to be a normal thing until much later. So he thought there was a contamination of the site. But then after when he turned over the pottery, he realized thatit was Bronze Age pottery and that had been exposed to the silicas in the soil, in the ground, and at such intense heat, it turned into what looked like a glaze. Something else that they saw in this is they found half walls of homes. Either they were just half, maybe half stone and the rest was wood, but they would find the human remains that were cut off at the waste. The full skeleton below, just standing there in the ash, the restof the skeleton gone. And they could tell by the angle of how things burned in this city that something approached the city 25 degrees off the horizon and came down upon that city and destroyed it. And I think it's a very compelling case that this could be biblical Sodom and Gomorrah in that place.
The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and the other cities of the plain were judged by God and the evidence is there in the valleys surrounding the Dead Sea. It's not a story told as a fabled warning. It isn't fiction. Sodom and Gomorrah were and evidently are real places where the true God judged the unrighteousness of men.
And if they are real, God's judgment is real. And if God's judgment is real, there is coming a day when Jesus will return to judge both the living and the dead. You know, if we can tell ourselves, walk away from Genesis 19 and say Sodom and Gomorrah, they're just a story we tell. It's a manner of speaking that we, you know, we talk about the seriousness of sin, but it didn't really happen. God doesn't really judge people for their sin in such severe ways.
But yet, it seems the city is real. And if the city is real, then judgment is real. And God will come to judge the living and the dead through Christ. But the good news is this. This is good news, by the way. And it's our big idea for this morning. God warns and saves the righteous through judgment. So let's take a look at this. John MacArthur said this. This is the first sermon point, that God's.
that God's judgment is just and sovereign. John MacArthur said this, and it's not on the screen, but just hear what he says. He says, those cities and the entire surrounding region were judged without warning.
and with the utmost severity. What could be more severe than being cut off in the way that they were cut off? And Nineveh got a prophet to go to them. God sent Jonah to Nineveh and cried out, and they repented of their sin, and God relented. Now later Nineveh is judged for their sin, but there's no such prophet sent to Sodom and Gomorrah. And yet God's just and sovereign judgment is evident in what he does there. So let's look at Genesis 19 verses 24 and 25. There it says,
heaven. So the Lord rained it, and that fire was from the Lord. There's no doubt who is the one who has judged Sodom. And he overthrew, that word actually means destroyed, you know, they overthrew. If you overthrow a government, you destroy that government, you take its place. And here, though, it's the physical destruction of the cities on the plain. They are destroyed. All the valley, everything, every inhabitant, everything that was alive was destroyed.
Have you ever watched those flows of magma, by the way? You think about the intensity of this heat. And there was, I saw an image, I can't remember where it was. I was thinking it was Hawaii, but I've looked at so many volcanoes and things this week, studying Sodom and Gomorrah. But it's pretty amazing. These lava flows can build up to be 20, 30 feet above the level of the ground. And I saw these two people standing on just what looks like a regular highway, and there's this flow of magma going by them.
It looks like a good clip-- 25-35 mph. It's just going so fast, and it's so hot everything in its path gets destroyed. So the heat of this destruction destroys absolutely every living thing, And we can see the sovereign hand of God in the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah in verse 29 It says so it was that when God destroyed the cities of the valley
God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow when he overthrew the cities in which Lot had lived. It's God that's doing it all. God is destroying. God has remembered Abraham's prayers when Abraham was interceding for the righteous in the city, and there weren't even five. It seems there might have been one in the end when we get there next week.
But he remembers Abraham, and he doesn't advise Lot to leave; he sends Lot out. You know, one of the things that I was thinking after preaching, preachers always do postmortems on their sermons, what they could have said, how they could have said something better. But one of the things that I could have said last week, and I said it in some ways, just not this clearly, is that Lot could not save himself.
He was so lured by the world and the sin of Sodom that he could not save himself. It required God by his mighty hand to take Lot and bring him out of the city. And that's exactly what happens. Remember, last week, Lot lingers. Lot doesn't want to leave. Lot was like, come on, I really like this place. I got a nice house. I'm an important guy in town. I got a great job. Whatever the thing might be, he doesn't want to go.
And so God sent Lot out by his sovereign hand. It's very kind to say that he sent Lot out actually, because it's more like he picked Lot up by the collar of his shirt and set him down in a new place, him and his whole family. But it's God that is doing it all from beginning to end.
Jude 7 tells us that Sodom and Gomorrah were judged due to their sexual immorality, that they exchanged natural relations and desires for unnatural ones. It's not very politically correct to say, but what the scripture teaches and what I believe and what we should all believe is that they were judged for their homosexuality. Genesis 18 .25, remember,
Abraham is just wrestling with the fact that God is going to judge these people for their sin, this whole city, all these cities on the plain. And he says to God, and it's a rhetorical question because he knows the answer is no, that he knows that the answer is yes. So the question is, shall not the judge of all the earth do what is just? And we know the answer to that is supposed to be yes. It's never answered. But God, we know, does what is just. And some of you here, some of you listening online might think that homosexuality is mostly okay as long as people are in committed relationships.
Why is it that nobody says anything more about committed relationships among heterosexuals? You ever notice that? That when people say, well, I approve of gay marriage. Now, just for clear, I do not approve of gay marriage, but people say this. I approve of gay marriage, of course, as long as they're in committed relationships. But you never say that about heterosexual couples, do you? You never hear someone say, I believe in heterosexual marriage, as long as they're in committed relationships. The reason why they don't is because they know heterosexuality is ordained by nature and homosexuality is against nature. It's because their consciences know that homosexuality is sin and they are working to suppress the truth and unrighteousness. As it says in Romans 1 32, though they knew God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but they give approval to those who practice them.
And that's one of the other things. As Christians, we can't just sit by and say, you know, I don't agree with homosexuality. I don't approve of homosexual marriage. But whatever they want to do, I'm OK with that, as long as they leave it at their house. Those who approve of such practices are not looked on kindly by the scripture either.
It is God the all holy and only wise who judges, and he judges justly, and his judgments stand no matter what we think or do. So this morning you're going to think, man, Anton, that's just really harsh. And you know what? I'm being really gentle about this. It could be much stronger. It could be much stronger. But if you disagree with me, it doesn't change the fact that it is sin.
It doesn't change the fact that God will judge it. And it doesn't change the fact that we should not give approval to it either. Psalm 19, nine says, the fear of the Lord is clean meaning pure, enduring forever, the rules, meaning the just decrees and judgments of the Lord are true. And then how does this end right here in Psalm 19, nine, it should be on the screen, do you have it on the screen? Psalm 19, there we go. And righteous altogether, the judgments, the divine decrees of God are just, they are true, and they are righteous altogether.
God's just and sovereign judgment assures us that in the end, sin does not win. The serpent does not get the ultimate victory. God's kingdom is realized not only through salvation, but also through the judgment of sin.
And we're called to align our thinking with that in which the Lord has revealed through his word. Sin by any other name is still sin. You can call it what you want. You can say it's marriage. It's not marriage. It's something other than marriage. Marriage is between a man and a woman only. It's not between two women. It's not between two men.
If anybody wants to put some money on this, I'm not a betting guy, but I will bet you three years, five years at the most, three people can get married, four people get married, people can marry their pets, people can marry their house, they can build and marry whatever you want because that's the way that the depraved mind goes. And I know it's not a lot, but it's a logical fallacy to say that there's a slippery slope; that slippery slope idea just doesn't work out if you try to sit down and figure it out, but that's just the way that human beings are. When they're depraved, they become more and more depraved. So we're called to align our thinking with the Lord.
And if you approve that which the scripture condemns, you are standing in opposition to God and his word. Your argument is against him. And I can tell you, I would be a betting man in that one. I can tell you who's going to win. It's going to be the Lord. Because he is just and sovereign. And his judgment also reminds us too that without judgment, there is no mercy. What does mercy mean? What does God being merciful to you even mean if there is no judgment? It is through mercy that God warns and saves the righteous through judgment. And this point too, that God is kind and patient, offering us warnings of judgment.
God is kind and patient. He offers us warnings of judgment. Throughout scripture, as the revelation of Christ continues from Genesis to the book of Revelation, Sodom and Gomorrah serve as warnings of judgment, culminating in the great end-time judgment of Babylon the Great, the city of harlots, and the haunt of demons.
Sodom and Gomorrah play a really big part. I want to take us through the Bible to see how Sodom and Gomorrah work out in Scripture. God offers us warnings of judgment, so let's look at them through scripture, starting with Deuteronomy 29, 18. It says there to the people of Israel, beware lest there be among you a man or a woman or clan or tribe whose heart is turning away today from the Lord our God to go and serve the gods of those nations. Beware lest there be among you a root-bearing poisonous and bitter fruit. And continuing in verse 22.
And the next generation, your children who rise up after you and the foreigner who comes from a far land will say when they see the afflictions of the land and the sicknesses with which the Lord has made it sick, the whole land burned out with brimstone and salt, nothing sown and nothing growing where no plant can sprout, an overthrow like that of Sodom and Gomorrah, Adma and Zeboim, which the Lord overthrew in his anger and wrath. Those are the other cities on the plain. And, all the nations will say, why has the Lord done this, done thus to this land? What caused the heat of this great anger?
Then the people will say it is because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt and went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods whom they had not known and whom he had not allotted to them. Therefore the anger of the Lord was kindled against this land, bringing upon it all the curses written in this book.
And the Lord uprooted them from their land in anger and fury and great wrath and cast them into another land as they are today.
So Deuteronomy starts to use this theme, this image, this figure of Sodom and Gomorrah to relate to the sin of God's people. In Judges 19, there's an account—we're not going to read it today; it would take too much to unpack—that mirrors the situation in which the men of Sodom demanded of Lot that he send the men from his home so that the men of the city might know those two men sexually.
Notice that Israel has become just like Sodom. No doubt about this remains when Isaiah calls out to Israel. Now, mind you, Isaiah 1:10 is a call to the people of Israel. Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom. Give ear to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah. He's speaking to Israel in this call.
The prophets continue to connect Sodom to warning and judgment. Jeremiah 23, 14 calls out the prophets of Jerusalem, the ones who are called to declare the word of God. And to them, Jeremiah says in Jeremiah 23, 14, he says, but in the prophets of Jerusalem, I have seen a horrible thing. They commit adultery and walk in lies. They strengthen the hands of evildoers so that no one turns from his evil. All of them have become like Sodom to me and its inhabitants like Gomorrah.
Derek Kidner makes this really good observation. He's an Old Testament scholar, mostly known for his work in Proverbs, but he says this, he says, to be addressed as Sodom was virtually a charge and a sentence in one. We know what the sentence was for Sodom, and it's the same for those who follow in Sodom's path.
Isaiah and Jeremiah are joined by Ezekiel. Ezekiel says that Israel makes Sodom look righteous by comparison. Ezekiel 16 verses 47 to 51, this is what Ezekiel says to Israel, not only did you walk in their ways and do according to their abominations, within a very little time you were more corrupt than they in all your ways. As I live declares the Lord God, your sister Sodom and her daughters have not done as you and your daughters have done.
Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom. She and her daughters had pride, excessive food, and prosperous ease but did not aid the poor and the needy. Now, a lot of people will stop right there and say, see, homosexuality is fine. God did not judge them for their homosexuality in Sodom. He judged them because they weren't kind to the poor. That's why he wiped them out. You know, we'd all be dead if that was the case.
But they don't go on to verse 50. You’ve got to understand, when people do these kinds of things, they're just quoting verses out of context. Look at what it says in verse 50. They were haughty and did an abomination before me. What do you think that abomination was? It was the exchange of natural desires and relations for unnatural ones. And what does God do? He says in Ezekiel 16:50, “So I removed them when I saw it.”
Samaria has not committed half your sins. You have committed more abominations than they and have made your sisters appear righteous by all the abominations that you have committed. So, the people of Sodom look righteous in comparison to God's people. Throughout the Old Testament, God continues to reveal that Sodom and Gomorrah are a theme or a figure of judgment. And when it's brought up, the severity of the judgment is very clear.
God is going to come, and he's going to judge people for their sins. It's not surprising that the same themes of warning and judgment continue in the New Testament: warning of the just end of those who deny Christ and the gift of eternal life through him.
Speaking to his disciples, this is in Matthew 10. The 70 are sent out to declare the kingdom of God and heal the sick. Jesus tells them in Matthew chapter 10, verses 12 through 15, I have this for you. There it is, perfect. As you enter the house, greet it. And if the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it. But if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. And if anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, now they're sharing the gospel of the kingdom, so if they will not receive the good news, the kingdom of God is near and that the Son of God has appeared, he says, shake off the dust from your feet when you leave that house or town. Truly I say to you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town.
So now those who reject Christ, those who reject the gospel of Jesus Christ, their suffering in hell, their judgment is going to be more severe than the judgment that God gave upon Sodom and Gomorrah. Second Peter 2, 6.
Peter notes there and tells us, and it was read this morning, that by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes, he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly. So Sodom and Gomorrah, that's a theme of judgment, it's also a theme of final end for the ungodly. Those who reject Christ will spend eternity apart from God. And Sodom and Gomorrah shows us what that eternal punishment will look like. Jude 7 says, just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. So Sodom and Gomorrah becomes, from beginning to end, is the judgment of God upon the ungodly for their sins against God. And then in the New Testament, comes to full fruition in the picture of hell. And we could also quote Revelation, I think chapter 11. There's a mention of Sodom there, but there are also allusions, if you remember from our 42 week series in Revelation, that we, I say it like I'm very proud of 42 weeks, but that there were many allusions to Sodom and Gomorrah and to fire and brimstone there as well, pointing back to such judgment.
Charles Ryrie says this, he says, every warning God gives comes from an omniscient being. So we should be extremely sensitive to them. He does not warn us on the basis of only guessing what might happen. He knows. So we must recognize the grace and mercy of God who has warned us of the judgment that is coming in this world.
And the last days, it says it will be like the days of Sodom and Gomorrah. The last days seem to be upon us in a way that previous generations, I don't think, could say.
There are previous generations that thought that Christ was gonna return any moment. You remember the 88 reasons that Christ will come back in 88, and when he didn't, they published another book, 89 reasons why he would come back in 89? It's true they did. It was actually that right there, those two years, 88 and 89, were the final nail in the coffin of dispensational theology, which we talked about last, in that 42 -week sermon series, in our study of Revelation.
But those last days seem to be upon us in a way that previous generations could not have imagined. We must discern the times. And it's time, brothers and sisters, to prepare our hearts for the judgment. As disciples of Jesus, we cannot understand our salvation apart from his judgment. We cannot comprehend the depths of his grace and love for us if we do not have a solid grasp on what we have been saved from.
We must dig deeper into the word with greater passion and motivation to know the depths of God's mercy through judgment. Because he warns and saves the righteous through judgment. I love this quote by Charles Spurgeon. So you realize I'm having fun with having the screen back. I say screen singular, right? we have two again. I never know what's going on around here. Charles Spurgeon says, not yet the thunderbolt. Not yet the riven heavens and the reeling earth, not yet the great white throne and the day of judgment, for he is very pitiful and bears long with men." And you want not to think that since God has not yet judged that you can continue in your sin or give approval to those who do sin. Now you can love the person, but you can't say, yes, what you're doing is okay. God won't, don't worry about it. God doesn't really, that's really not that important. What you have to say is this is against the word of God and you should repent of that sin and come and serve the Lord with your whole heart. God's forbearance with your sin and anyone else's sin is a demonstration of his kindness in order that he might lead us to repentance. For the world is condemned already and on our own merits all of the world would be judged along with the unrighteousness of men if it were not for Christ.
Another quote, A .W. Tozier. He says, we must keep in mind that the gospel is not good news only, but a judgment as well upon everyone who hears it. The message of the cross is good news indeed for the penitent, but to those who obey not the gospel, it carries an overtone of warning.
That overtone of warning is evident in Jesus' teaching of the gospel. To consider Jesus' warnings and another way in which his passage serves us, I want to pay special attention to what Jesus says in Luke 17:32. It's a very short verse. Let's look at it in context.
Jesus is telling his disciples about the coming of the kingdom of God and its fullness, the day of God's final ultimate rule and reign. And beginning in chapter 17, verse 28, Jesus says this, he says, the one who is on the housetop with his goods in the house, not come down to take them away. And likewise, let the one who is in the field not turn back. And here's the verse I want us to focus on. Remember Lot's wife. Now why would Jesus tell us to remember Lot's wife? He says it in verse 33, whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it.
I tell you, in that night there will be two in one bed. One will be taken and the other left. There will be two women grinding together. One will be taken and the other left. So remember Lot's wife, Jesus, is what are we to remember? We remember that she sought to preserve her own life and in the midst of that she lost it. It says she looked back and she turned into a pillar of salt. Now, one of the things that they've investigated in that area is that there is a pillar of salt that people say is Lot's wife still sitting and standing there today. Maybe it is. It would be hard to tell, wouldn't it, if it was Lot's wife or not? But that pillar of salt, some people have thought maybe in the aftermath of the destruction that the salt encrusted things around it and she became encrusted with salt.
It is hard to say, but what we do know for sure is that she looked back in an attempt to preserve her own life, and she lost it. She was on her way to safety, and she turned back, longing for what she had before. She was on her way to being saved, but she loved the world and Sodom so much that she had to look back to see what she was going to be missing.
This is what Jay Vernon McGee says about Lot's wife. He says, her heart was in Sodom. Her body walked out, but she surely left her heart there. It is sad.
But isn't that how so many in the 21st-century church live? They show up at church, but their hearts are in the world. Here the word of God is being preached, you have your Bibles in your laps, and you just can't wait to move on to the next thing today. Why is that? There should be a hunger for our love for God's word and to worship him. People show up at church, but their hearts are in the world. They worship and sing and maybe even read the scripture faithfully.
But these are just things they do. They go and live about in the world. Afterward, they set aside the Word and the warnings of their consciences and lead their hearts to wander into the mire and muck of the world, whether that be internet pornography or the myriad of all other manners of ungodly living. And there are so many different ways to sin. They are living in the bondage of sin. It is their master. They are in the church, but they are not in Christ.
It doesn't have to be that way. Jesus tells us to remember Lot's wife. And to remember Lot's wife means that we need to die to ourselves. We must repent of our sin and cast the whole weight of our lives on Christ, our Redeemer and Savior. When we do, Romans 3:24 says we are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
Anthony Holcombe notes this: the death of Jesus means that the verdict which God will pronounce over us on the day of judgment has been brought into the present. We therefore do not need to fear the judgment day. And the verdict isn't that you're innocent of sin, the verdict is that you're righteous in Christ because he's given you that righteousness as a gift.
When we put our trust in Christ, the judgment that we deserve is placed on him. Our sinfulness is exchanged for his righteousness and we are saved not because of what we have done, but because Christ gave his life as an atonement for sin. We are born again and justified before God. And Acts 4:12 says, there is no salvation in anyone else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we may be saved.
Friends, brothers, sisters in Christ, do you want to be saved from the judgment that is coming upon the earth? There is only one way. It's Jesus Christ and Him crucified. If the desire of your heart is to be saved and to live for Christ, that is the work of the Spirit in your heart. You can trust that desire, that nudging in your heart. If you have that desire, I believe that it would be the Lord that's calling you to make a commitment to the Lord.
But what must you do to be saved? Well, you must remember Lot's wife. You need to repent of your sins. Do a 180-degree turn away from the things Scripture warns you are sinful.
Put your trust in Christ, just asking the Lord to come into your life and forgive you of your sins. Then tell someone—and I would love it if you told me—there are probably five other people you could tell here, too, this morning. Then get a Bible and begin learning what it means to be a follower of Christ. We have lots of free Bibles sitting around here today; you could take one. And then join a Bible-believing church like this one.
Sodom and Gomorrah are real places, brothers and sisters, where the true God judged the unrighteousness of men. And since his judgment of Sodom is real, his judgment of the earth is real. Do not be deceived, it says in Galatians 6. God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, they will also reap. And if you sow sin, you will reap judgment. But if you sow faith, if you sow faith in Christ, then what you reap there is just righteousness and glory in Christ. And there's coming a day when Jesus will come to judge both the living and the dead. So, brothers and sisters, prepare your hearts for the coming day of judgment because there's one thing I am sure of. There are many things, actually, but there's this one this morning that I think is foremost on my mind. The day of judgment is coming, and do not be found apart from Christ on that day for it will be like the days of Sodom and Gomorrah, and it will not go well. God warns and saves the righteous through judgment.
Let's pray. Father, I pray this morning that everyone here would come to the saving knowledge of your Son, that they would know that in him there is no fear and judgment. There is only life to the full on account of the atonement which he wrought in his own blood upon the cross. Send your spirit, Lord God, to quicken our hearts, which are desperately in need of saving and renewal. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, God, be glorified in your church and shine brightly through your people as they glorify your holy name. We pray this in the mighty name of Jesus, and all of God's people said, Amen.