God’s Word for You
2 Peter 2:6-10a Lot’s crosses, and ours
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Sunday, July 17, 2022
6 and if God reduced the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes in ruin, condemning them as an example of what is coming to the ungodly;
Sodom and Gomorrah were cities in the deep valley of the lower Jordan. Abraham’s nephew Lot thought it looked “like the garden of the Lord” (Genesis 13:10), and he was eager to go and live there. Lush and well-watered by the river, it was studded with oasis after oasis; there were wells and villages and at least four cities: Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Bela (also called Zoar), and villages belonging to a nation called the Zoboiim. Each city had its own king, and they were wealthy and prosperous. Among their many sins, all of the men of Sodom and Gomorrah, both young and old, were guilty of adultery, infidelity, obscenity, homosexuality and other perversions; they were even guilty of gang rape according to Genesis 19:4-5, a practice still found in cities within walking distance of Jerusalem in the days of the Judges, centuries later (Judges 19). This wickedness (for every part of it was contrary to God’s will and God’s holy Word) was known to God, and he destroyed the city in about 2067 BC, if my math is correct. This destruction was through a hail of sulfur and fire from the sky, perhaps Moses’ way of describing a volcanic eruption. It happened so suddenly that even Lot and his family barely escaped with their lives, and nothing of either city remains today to be properly identified. The caldera of this eruption has disappeared, or has sunk back into the earth.
Once again, the suddenness of the end and the complete judgment of the ungodly is Peter’s message for us.
7 and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man who was very distressed by the immorality of those morally corrupt people 8 (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by their lawless deeds that he saw and heard), 9 then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until judgment day—10 especially those who indulge their flesh in depraved lust, and who despise authority.
The emphasis of verses 7-10 changes. Now, rather than ask whether God will certainly punish the ungodly, Peter asks whether God will spare the godly by turning mid-sentence from the fate of Lot’s city to the fate of righteous Lot. He was spared, and those with faith in God will be spared as well.
Notice Peter’s attention to Lot’s suffering, “tormented in his righteous soul by their lawless deeds that he saw and heard.” We have only a brief account of this in Genesis, with the rape gang shouting through Lot’s door to hand over his angelic visitors to them for their ungodly pleasures. Lot stands out for once in his life at this time as a righteous man and a preacher of righteousness. We think of Lot compared to Abraham, where he plays a miserable second fiddle, but which of us could stand next to Abraham, who might have made even Moses blush in shame and embarrassment? Yes, Lot took the better looking land. Yes, Lot had to be rescued. And yes, later on, Lot got drunk and was taken advantage of by his daughters, perhaps on account of their upbringing in Sodom. But he stood up for his faith and preached against the sins of the city while he lived there until he was drowned out by their voices and actions and their hard hearts.
“The Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial.” This is marvelous comfort to all Christians for the crosses we all bear. Lot brought up his daughters in the faith despite the wicked city he lived in. He did not impress his wicked neighbors with his faith. They didn’t listen to him, and they probably ridiculed him, and least those who weren’t so steeped in their sins that they wouldn’t have been able to make head or tails out of his message. The trials that we face today have their own special agony and ache for each of us, but God rescued Lot, and he knows how to rescue you and me.
Peter makes a special point of “those who indulge their flesh in depraved lust and who despise authority.” These are reminders of the Sixth, Ninth, Tenth, and Fourth Commandments. Earlier, the false teachers were shown to have broken the first table of the law, and now they are proven to have broken the second. James is right when he warns that “whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it” (James 2:10), but false teachers are hardly repentant believers who stumble at just one point. They are guilty of breaking all of it precisely because they have broken all of it, commandment by commandment, sin by sin, snapping and crushing the letter as well as the spirit of the holy Law at every point, and accusing the believer of worse things the whole time. This, too, is a cross we bear: the vilification and aspersions by the wicked in the world who want nothing more than to ruin the Christian’s good name and reputation. This was something Abraham suffered, and Moses, and Paul, and our Lord Jesus. And yet, Lot as well. The daily crosses and the more permanent crosses of pain and grief are profitable to us, because such crosses weaken our sinful flesh and weaken the service of sin (1 Peter 4:1). And God permits us to be afflicted with our crosses in order to achieve sanctification in us. “God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness” (Hebrews 12:10). Our crosses make our spiritual condition clear to us; that we are lost without God. This should not seem strange to us, Peter says (1 Peter 4:12), but whatever crosses we bear, up to the ultimate suffering on account of the name of Christ, we know that we are blessed, and the Spirit of God rests upon us. We have put our faith in Jesus, for he has accomplished what we never could, which is the salvation of our souls. And he has sent the Holy Spirit to each one of us. When we suffer because of our faith, the Spirit has come out of his little temple, the shrine of our believing hearts, and he has taken up his stance upon the peak of our lives, for the world to see. And if the world rejects us because of him, then the world condemns itself, but we stand in the glory of our faith in God, the Lord and Creator of all.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.