Times of Gomorrah

Was reading the old book the other day and came across the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. They were two depraved cities, living in huge amounts, in fact they were celebrating and openly partaking in everything that was against the law of God.

God had had enough and decided it was better to blow the two cities away than let them continue to infect the world with their depravity. He found one righteous man, Lot, so told him to get out of the city before the flaming balls came from heaven to obliterate everything.

And I guess most of us know the pillar of salt story, always made me wonder ‘why a pillar of salt?’ Why not a toad? Or a snake? Or a tumble weed?

Anyway at Indy a few weeks ago, I blogged about how I’d felt witness to the depravity and self centeredness of this generation. I also mentioned something Pastor Garry Coleman mentioned at the Indy Festival Chapel Service… “You look around Surfer’s Paradise and think that if things don’t change God is going to have to resurrect Sodom and Gomorrah and apologise.”

Man you look at all the stuff going on in those two cities in the Old Testament, and I can pretty well guarantee most of that stuff was happening over the Indy weekend, and happens on a weekly basis all over the world. Our world has sunk into that depravity and sin-nature to levels I don’t think would have been seen in the Old Testament.

Yet there are no fireballs from heaven, and Christians fleeing cities with some turning into pillars of salt.

The key, I feel, is the new covenant of grace which God signed with the death of his Son. Since Jesus took up a cross and died, God’s law is justified only after grace is applied. For believers when they come home to their father, grace covers the law and God sees only the Son. Yet people who grieve the Holy Spirit and don’t accept that grace which Jesus gives, the law must be repaid, just as in the time of Sodom.

Out of God’s love for us, he’s provided that amazing way out…. that through accepting the Son, all of our sins, all of our depravity and all of our evilness is then placed on Jesus, in fact Jesus willingly takes all of that junk and puts it to the punishment he’s paid already. God then looks at us and sees no sin, only another Jesus standing in front of him.

The simple truths of that fact totally astonishes me.

But imagine how much it must be hurting God to see Surfer’s Paradise, and Las Vegas, and so many other cities of the world just revelling in sin!!! God must feel that same hurt he felt when he decided to nuke Sodom and Gomorrah, yet out of such great love he still sent his Son, knowing that in 2000 years time we’d be hurting him just as much.

God is good! I pray as Christians we can share him with all those in the world who currently don’t know him.