Moving Forward--Letting Go Of The Past.
Calvary 6/9/2013 Genesis 19:1-26 Luke 9:57-62
Is there anybody here who has held on to something that had a special meaning to you and nobody else quite understood why you just would not throw it away? I had a blue and gold football jerseys, number 62, that had one time been a game jersey from the all black high school I went to in Ga. The school was Oconee High School and the mascot was the Trojans. I grew up as a little boy wanting to play for the Oconee Trojans. The other school in the city was the all white school. It was called Dublin High School and their mascot was the Fighting Irish.
When integregation came to the school system, Oconee was shut down, and a new school was built for both Blacks and Whites and they took a color from each school so that the colors were green and gold. But the name of the school was Dublin High School and the mascot continued to be “The Fighting Irish.”
Those of us who had been Oconee Trojans had a hard time with the new name. As a school we could all cheer for Dublin, but if you mentioned, “The Fighting Irish”, you were treading on thin water. Early in the school year, we were having a confrontation in the hall way, and somehow all the white students were on one side and the blacks were on the other and somebody starting yelling The Fighting Irish. We responded with a call for the Trojans.
That erupted into a fight among the students in the hallways, that spilled out into the courtyard, and ended with police and tear gas on the front lawn. For the remainder of the year, there was policemen on every hall way and no one could gather in any halls. Even the doors were taken off the bathroom stalls. I hated going to that school and eventually went to New York to play sports and to graduate. I realize now, that my unwillingness to let go of the past contributed to my miserable year at the school. I held on to that number 62 jersey for years as my link to a past that was fading away. But the link had blinded me to see the school through only one set of eyes.
By the time my younger brothers reached high school, they proudly called themselves the Dublin Fighting Irish and they had more winning seasons than we did because they were united in purpose. They did not allow the past, to pull them back into conflict with each other. Sometimes longing for the way things use to be, can rob us of the new experiences God wants us to have today.
We are in the series Moving Forward. Last Week Pastor Toby looked at Forgiveness and Healing. This Week’s Part 2 is “Moving Forward, Letting Go of the Past.” There are times that if we are to move forward we have to look around and see if we have chained ourselves emotionally or physically to things or people that may hinder us in our walk with God. Jesus did not say, “Hey you, stand right where you are and be my servant.”
Jesus was more along the lines, “Hey you, stop where you’re going and come follow me.” The whole idea of coming to follow Jesus, means you are going to have to let go of what you were doing and pick up on this new plan or direction for your life. Jesus is always calling us to move in a direction of getting to know who God is and the incredible amount of love that God has for every person. Jesus calls us to follow him, because He knows that left to ourselves, we are going to hurt ourselves and a lot of other people in the process. Jesus is not calling us to come follow him in order to make our lives miserable. He’s calling us to come follow him so that we can truly have life.
One of the things about the Bible is that it is an honest book that tells life as it really is. It records the good, the bad, the ugly and the down right disgusting, because that’s how our actions are at times as human beings. That does not mean that God approves of all that is in the Bible, but God does record it all so that we can see how great our need for Him truly is. Today’s passage is so far from being politically correct, that very few sermons are preached on the text.
For background information for those of you who are not familiar with the Bible, let me tell you who we are talking about. Lot was the nephew of a very famous man in the Bible named Abram also called Abraham. God had called Abraham and his wife Sarah to leave the land they had grown up behind and go to a new country that he would show them. When Abraham left, he took along with him his Nephew Lot and Lot’s family.
They got along pretty well until God blessed them both with a lot of wealth in terms of flocks of animals. Their servants were arguing over which animals would get to drink first and which animals would get to eat first. Abraham wanted some peace in the family so he told Lot, “Look, the land will not sustain us both together. So let’s split up and go in different directions. If you go to the left, I will go to the right. If you go to the right, I will go to the left. Lot looked out over the land and he choose the land with the best looking grazing areas and plenty of water. He settled near the city of Sodom. The first thing the bible says about Sodom is that the people of Sodom were wicked and sinning greatly against the Lord. But that didn’t stop Lot from heading in that direction. How many of you know, “who you choose to hang close by will start influencing how you see the world and the decisions that you choose to make?” The Scriptures tell us that “bad company, corrupts good morals.”
Lot went from living outside of Sodom, to living inside Sodom. There was a king who came and attacked Sodom and Gomorrah and their allies. The king defeated them and took the people hostages and their property. Lot was captured along with them and carried off. A man escaped to let Abraham know that Lot had been captured. Abraham took his small army of men and rescued the people and possessions belonging to Sodom.
The king of Sodom offered all the possessions to Abraham as a reward, but Abraham refused to take a dime from him, because he didn’t want the Kind of Sodom to say he owned Abraham by making him rich. Even after this rescue, Lot wanted to go back to live in Sodom. He could not see that Abram kept moving forward in life, because when God told him to move, he moved. If we are to move forward in life, when Jesus says to come follow, we should get up and follow. That’s going to involve leaving something behind.
We think that because God is slow to judge sin, God will never judge sin. But that’s now what we find in the Scriptures. God is slow to bring judgment, because God would rather we admit the wrong we are doing, and turn away from it to move toward God. It’s called repentance. God finally put up with the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah long enough and decided to destroy the city.
Now the angels that God was sending to destroy the cities of Sodom, Gomorrah, and the surrounding cities stopped by to tell Abram what their mission was going to be. That’s when Abraham said, if you can find 50 righteous people, would you spare the city for the fifty. They said yes. Abraham got them down all the way to 10 people to keep the city from being destroyed. I think he was counting let me see Lot, his wife, his two daughters, their future husbands, and maybe four of Lot’s servants should make it okay for Lot and his family.
Well we come to our Scripture text, and we find that the two angels sent to destroy the area arrived at Sodom that night. Lot was sitting in the gateway to the city. He offered them his house for the night. They could eat, sleep, and be on their way in the morning. They told him no, they would stay in the open square. Lot was thinking the angels were two regular men and he knew what would happen to them if they stayed in the open square. He knew they would be gang raped by the men of the city. So he begged them to please come to his house and to go as soon as possible. He didn’t want anybody to see them. The two angels agreed to go to his home. They ate a meal together and before they got to bed, on the outside something was going on in Sodom.
As I told you, the Scriptures show us the good, the bad, the ugly and the down right disgusting. The men from every part of the city, the young and the old, surrounded the house and yelled to Lot. “Bring out the men that you took in tonight. We want to have sex with them.” People will tell you that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah is that they did not welcome people to their city. This text reveals that homosexuality was rampant in the city and that they intended to rape the men that came to the city.
It would be unfair to use this passage to say that all homosexuals are rapists. But it does show us that homosexual behavior is nothing new and that it was known years ago. As I said before, from a civil point of view, I am not working against gay marriages. But from a biblical point of view, I will not give my approval to a behavior that is prohibited by Scripture if you want to move forward in God.
The battle with the gay and lesbian movement has not been the acceptance of people. We accept people with behaviors we disagree with all the time. The battle today is the demand that we approve the sexual behavior. I can love people who commit adultery and who commit premarital sex. But if I am moving forward in Christ, I cannot accept their behavior as being compatible with Scripture. 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 (NIV) 9 Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders
10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
11 And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. The good news I see is that people from all kinds of backgrounds and sins are welcome in the church and what unites them is that the power of Jesus Christ cleanses them all from sin.
Our government's Department of Justice Pride Group is demanding that everyone openly approve of the behavior and that silence will be considered as a disapproval. The brochure says that a good supervisor should vocally affirm homosexuality. “DON’T judge or remain silent. Silence will be interpreted as disapproval,” the brochure tells employees. Can you imagine telling an atheist, to vocally affirm that Jesus is Lord in order to make Christians feel better. For those of you wanting to see the brochure, I have a copy.
Lot had been living in Sodom so long that the people just expected him to go along with what it was they wanted to do. Not only that, he had been around them so long that his morality had just about sunk to the same level as theirs. He is offering to trade his own two daughters to the crowd in order to save the two men. God is not approving of his offer by recording it in the bible. God is showing us just how far we as Christians can be influe-
nced by the society around us simply by accepting their values as our own.
They yell at him, “Who do you think you are trying to take a stand and telling us what is right and wrong. We are going to do worse to you what we already have in mind for those other two guys.” At this point they start to press in on Lot. The two angels reach out and grab him to pull him back inside. The men then charge to the door to start to tear the house down board by board. Now as Lot was moving closer and closer to Sodom, he had no idea this was going to happen to him. But there was something in Sodom that he just would not let go of. This is the second time his life has been threatened by hanging on to Sodom.
If those two men had not been angels, Lot would have been in for a very rough night. Because they were angels, they struck all the men outside the house with blindness so that they couldn’t find the door. The angles then told Lot, “Look if you have any family members, or friends, or anyone else, get them and get out of this city because we are going to destroy this place. The outcry to the Lord against its people is so great, that the Lord has sent us to destroy it.
Lot then goes on a preaching circuit. He finds the two guys his daughters are engaged to marry to tell them, come with me quickly. “You’ve got to run for your lives. The Lord is going to destroy this place.” His future sons in law thinks that Lot is joking. “Why on earth would God would destroy the place. We’ve been doing what we’re doing for years.” He spends hours trying to convince them to leave, but they want nothing to do with them. You know when people don’t see any difference in the way we live from the way they live, its hard for them to believe us when we talk about God is going to judge people for their sin.
This effort to get people to go goes on too long and Lot is very unsuccessful. Now its about time for the sun to come up. The angels tell Lot, “Man, you have got to get out of here in a hurry. Take your wife, and your two daughters who are here and get out or you will be swept away with the city.” You know if your house was about to explode and someone told you, there’s gas leaking and the house will blow any minute, how many of you would have ran out and said thank you as you passed on by. Lot has been warned. He’s seen the miracle of the blindness. He’s seen God’s mercy by allowing him a chance to try to go and get his family and friends so they could be saved. He’s seen the plea of the angels for them to get out quickly.
And the Scriptures still say, “he hesitated.” He was not ready to let go of the past in order to move forward. He was actually willing to risk losing everything, than to let go of the past and embrace a new relationship with God. When the angels saw that he was not going to leave, they grabbed the hands of Lot, his wife, and his two daughters and led them out of the city because the Lord was merciful to them. The angels then told them, “run for your lives, don’t look back, and don’t stop anywhere in the plain. Flee to the mountain or you will be swept away.”
Again you would have thought Lot would have said, Thank you! What’s the quickest way to the mountain. But no, Lot still is trying to hold on to the past. He says look, “ I have found favor in your sight and you have shown me great kindness by letting me live. But I can’t make it to the mountains. I just know the disaster will overtake me. Now there is a small town nearby. Let me run to it. You shouldn’t have to destroy it because it is small. Please let me run to it.” This man does not want to let go of Sodom. He still wants a small trophy piece. Is there anything in your life today, that you need to just let go of so that you can follow the Lord without making compromises?
Jesus says come follow me, and we tell him, I’m coming Lord but I want to bring along this little habit, this little attitude, or this little sin. After all, it’s not really that big of a problem. The angles are so frustrated with Lot at this point, they tell him alright man, but get there as quickly as you can. I can’t do anything until you leave. So they took off for this place call Zoar. The sun had risen high in the sky so it must have taken them a few hours to get there since the sun was just getting ready to come up when they left Sodom. That’s when God rained down burning sulphur on Sodom and Gomorrah and destroyed the cities, the plains, and all the beautiful vegetation that had attracted Lot in that direction in the first place.
Lot and his family must have heard the noise of what was happening behind them. His wife decided she could not let go until she got one final look at what they were leaving behind. She ignored the angel’s warning not to look back, and when she did, she turned into a pillar of salt. Sometimes when God has delivered us out of a situation or a place or from a person, the worse thing we can is to take one more look, or try it just one more time, or give them one more chance. When we do, we find ourselves sucked back into the situation all over again.
God has awesome power to deliver us from any bondage in this life. He can help us overcome any sin that is a part of us. But he leaves it up to us to decide if we are going to look back to desire what he’s called us away from. Jesus used some pretty stern words for looking back. He said in our New Testatment reading that “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.” My friends its not so much a matter of where we have been in our lives, as it is where is God calling us to go. Where God calls us to follow, God gives the strength and power to make it happen. God is calling us to move forward, We need to make the choice to let go of the past.
