JUDGMENT REMINDERS (PART 3)

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire.

Jude 1:7

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

When people blatantly live in sin and disrespect the God who made them, they do so under the risk of being an object of His judgment because while He is a God of love and mercy and grace, He is also a God of judgment.

A good part of this letter we have been studying, a letter written by Jesus’ half-brother Jude, spends time reminding its readers about how God does send punishment on the ungodly, drawing from Old Testament history to validate the point.

In the first message, we were drawn back to God’s blessed deliverance of the Israelites from the clutches and oppression of their Egyptian captivity. He did so with the promise of leading them to a land that would be their very own, a land where they would settle and become a great nation. You would have thought the Israelites would have trusted God with faith after seeing His power on full display during their rescue but during their forty day journey to the Promised Land, they not only engaged in complaining about their circumstances but also pagan worship. Within those circumstances, we saw where the Lord sent punishment on His people but they had saved their worst for last. For after God had brought them to the moment of entering Canaan, they chose not to, afraid after receiving harrowing news from ten of the twelve scouts who were sent in to assess the way ahead. Their sinful disbelief led to God’s condemnation and being sent away to wander in the wilderness for forty years, enough time for the faithless generation to die off so their offspring could be given the opportunity to cross the Jordan and inherit the land God promised.

Then in yesterday’s message, the second in this series, we saw how even angelic beings were subject to the judgment of God with some shackled in darkness with eternal chains and imprisoned until the “judgment on the great Day (v.6). These fallen angels, also called demons, had “abandoned their proper dwelling”, sinning against God and therefore removed from their holy stature.

And this brings us to today’s message as we see that even entire cities can be obliterated over their wickedness by the all powerful, mighty God of all creation. Let’s look at verse 7 of Jude, chapter 1.

In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire.  

We first get a hint of the fallen state of one of these cities as Abram and Lot established themselves in Canaan and the “whole plain of the Jordan” respectively (Genesis 13:10-12). Within these verses, we also learn that Lot put down roots near a city named Sodom which was described this way in verse 13:

Now the people of Sodom were wicked and were sinning greatly against the Lord.

Not good.

Later, God would come to Abraham and say this about Sodom and its sister city Gomorrah:

“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.” Genesis 18:20-21

And with that, God dispatched the angels who had appeared as men to Abraham, sending them to Sodom. There, they found transgression as the norm with sexual immorality, especially homosexuality, running rampant. In fact, after the angels accepted Lot’s offer of hospitality, a mob of men gathered outside of his residence, demanding that he send the two men (angels) out so they could have sex with them (Genesis 19:1-5). In the Book of Ezekiel, we find more evidence regarding the sin of Sodom. In the sixteenth chapter, we find the Lord saying this:

“Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before Me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.” Vv.49-50

What did that doing away with them look like?

We read this after Lot and his family fled the city:

...the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the Lord out of the heavens. Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying all those living in the cities—and also the vegetation in the land. Genesis 19:24-25

And with that, two major cities were wiped out, destroyed with fire from Heaven sent by a God who judges blatant, unrepentant sinfulness.

Think about this a minute in today’s context.

How many wicked cities exist in the world today, cities that carry themselves in sinful, ungodly ways, despite the evidence that God can and will annihilate and eradicate entire municipalities and do so with ease?

Indeed, we need this judgment reminder from the scriptures but the question is, how will the world respond to it, and specifically, the cities of that world?

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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