We’ve been asking our SELVES in this series the questions of life, as well as questioning our purpose memorialized at our own funeral.
Songs mentioned in previous posts resound in our thoughts from time to time – limited time in this fragile mortal frame. Some ask of meaning while others speak of a purpose driven life.
Is God that purpose?
Does you life have meaning in the eyes of the Eternal Lord God?
Two Cities DESTROYED!! 1:47 suggest viewing until end as you read of Abraham negotiating with the LORD to spare some souls of this city of Sodom & also Gomorrah
WHAT JUST HAPPENED!?!
Have you forgotten what happened before?
Did you hear the WARNINGS?
Lot’s wife is not only returned to her new home after being captured by enemy kings, but they move from their tent into the city of Sodom. In addition to tending his sheep, her husband is now an important man of the city.
Abraham, whose pastures were separate from Lot, welcomes three heavenly visitors. With the help of the Lord he had rescued Lot. Therefore, Lot, his wife and daughters and servants were returned to the land near Sodom, where they moved within the walls of the wicked city of the land they entered as sojourners.
Messengers of Mamre
20 Adonai said, “The outcry against S’dom and ‘Amora is so great and their sin so serious that I will now go down and see whether their deeds warrant the outcry that has reached me; if not, I will know.”
22 The men turned away from there and went toward S’dom, but Avraham remained standing before Adonai.
What follows in Mamre is a very personal negotiation between Abraham and G-d.
23 Abraham approached and said, “Will You indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?
.. will You indeed sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous who are in it?
.. “Now behold, I have ventured to speak to the Lord, although I am only dust and ashes. Suppose the fifty righteous are lacking five..?
.. forty..?
“Oh may the Lord not be angry.. thirty..?
..twenty-one..? ..ten..?
.. And He said, “I will not destroy it on account of the ten.”
Two angels sojourning to Sodom
The two strangers have traveled from Mamre and entered the gates of Sodom at a time when darkness falls.
When Lot saw them, he stood up to meet them and bowed himself to the ground.
“Here now, my lords, please come over to your servant’s house. Spend the night, wash your feet, get up early, and go on your way.”
“No, we’ll stay in the square.”
3 And he pressed upon them greatly; and they turned in unto him, and entered into his house; and he made them a feast, baking matzah for their supper, which they ate.
A Bible story not preached ‘at church’
The actions of evil intentions which follow are too intense for common preaching to our socially-correct, all-inclusive gatherings of 21st century ‘christian families.’
Even so, we bring with us to church (sometimes) our own children who are heavily influenced by such things in the world of media and by their everyday school friends.
4 Before they lay down, the men of the city—the men of Sodom—surrounded the house..
[MANY MEN, a MOB perhaps drunken with wine and other spirits] 5 and they called to Lot..
6 But Lot went out to them at the doorway, and shut the door behind him, and said,
“Please, my brothers, do not act wickedly.
Who will judge sin?
Lot includes himself in their community of Sodom, calling them brothers. For after their rescue by his uncle he is now esteemed to sit at the gate among Sodom’s leaders.
So Lot now bids his fellow rulers of Sodom, ‘do not act wickedly.‘
He actually offers his two betrothed daughters (of whom we will hear more of later) to satisfy the passions of the mob who would surge past him if possible and into his house.
As now is evident to US, wicked mobs are not easily dissuaded.
This one fellow came in to sojourn, and he will needs be a judge: now will we deal worse with thee, than with them.
And they pressed sore upon the man, even Lot, and came near to break the door. 10 But the men [the two angels, messengers of the Lord] put forth their hand, and pulled Lot into the house to them, and shut to the door.
11 And they smote the men that were at the door of the house with blindness..
Flee the Wrath to Come
“Whom else do you have here? .. for we are about to destroy this place,
because their outcry has become so great before the Lord that the Lord has sent us to destroy it.”
Do NOT miss the WARNING!
For it is not entirely about the destruction of SODOM & GOMMORAH, or even a fading recent memory from a century past of two cities: HIROSHIMA & NAGASAKI.
The END of these last days will come upon us suddenly!!
A.D. 2021 may or may not be the time, but no flesh and blood can hide from the wrath which is to come at the fulfillment of time.
Until the death of Solomon in 931 B.C., a glorious city of Jerusalem overlooked a great empire blessed by the LORD God, but then the politics of Israel divided the great land.
In just a few generations Israel (Samaria) succumbed in 722 B.C. and Judah when Jerusalem was sieged and the Temple burned in ~586 B.C.
Jerusalem falls [~586 B.C.]. Three years later the Jews and Jeremiah are forced to depart to Egypt. For forty years from (ca. 645–605 B.C.) Jeremiah had preached to Judah of the LORD’s judgment against it.
The Septuagint [Greek O.T.] introduces the crying out loud of Lamentations:
“And it came to pass, after Israel had been carried away captive…Jeremiah sat weeping [cf. 3:48, 49, etc.]…lamented…and said…”
How lonely sits the city That was full of people! She has become like a widow Who was once great among the nations! She who was a princess among the provinces Has become a forced laborer!
You may have felt that recently for a virtually empty NYC New Year’s Eve broadcast. Or perhaps the closed shops of your town caused anxiety that maybe you should where a mask in public.
What we knew as home and comfort, security and blessing — all those things have changed until God knows when.
The affliction of our hearts in this year of our Lord 2021 still struggles with COVID and countless crowds of displaced people have NO place to work. Some will be evicted from their meager subsistence in cold rooms rented from the rich princes of our darkness.
All the world suffers a great loss of normalcy as we cry out, “HOW?”
Will we find hope in our despair?
For in A.D. 2021, we feel just as lonely and afflicted as those forced from Jerusalem in 586 B.C. and also in A.D. 70, Jews and Christiansinto a crumbling Roman Empire.
Our journey into this unknown world of COVID doesn’t look so hopeful just now.
excerpts from Lamentations
She weeps bitterly in the night, And her tears are on her cheeks; She has no one to comfort her.. 3 Judah has gone into exile out of affliction..
All her gates are deserted..
Her little ones have gone away As captives led by the enemy. 6 All of her splendor Is gone from the daughter of Zion; Her leaders have become like deer That have found no pasture, And they have fled without strength From the pursuer.
Social Distancing
Fleeing from the world’s uncleanness
It was never just the Jews fleeing Jerusalem or multi-ethnic victims of a holocaust perpetrated by a 20th century thousand-year empire who suffered affliction.
Solomon suggested that there is nothing new under the sun.
Sieges of our empty cities of our empires in the time of Assyria or Rome, the U.S. or China, and even current afflictions of our political princes and their followers or victims do not surprise Almighty God.
In every era some in all nations some will succumb to war and hunger. Souls suffering by circumstance must flee from the wrath that is to come.
A pandemic of sin forces social distancing from the love of the LORD and each other. Throughout the self-idolatrous nations of their ‘mother earth,’ a covert COVID infested world will do what is right in their own eyes.
Wail out from the depths of your soul
The funeral dirge of your affliction
For it is not only for the sins of Jerusalem
But for the afflictions of the world
Fleeing from the Lord God.
Roger@ talkofJesus.com Jan. A.D. 2021
to be continued...
NEXT: in COVID - the Affliction of Social Distancing - part 2
we will define affliction & look to Scripture for our cure.
