The End – Part Two

It was the same as happened in the days of Lot; they were eating, they were drinking, they were buying, they were selling, they were planting, they were building;   Luke 17:28

The Days of Lot – Did you notice what changed in the days of Lot?  Life shifted from preoccupation with basic needs to preoccupation with commerce.  Now men were buying, selling, planting and building.  Economic enterprise took center stage.

Tais hemerais Lot were not days filled with debauchery.  Sodom was not destroyed solely for its immorality.  Ezekiel clarifies our thinking (Ezekiel 16:49).  Sodom was condemned because God’s blessing of abundance became a source of affluent indifference and arrogance.  Sodom refused to share God’s goodness with the poor.  Its moral failure was far deeper than sex.  It was a failure of vision.  Sodom forgot that God is a God of compassion.

Civilization graduated from Noah to Lot.  It moved from physical needs to commercial endeavors.  But its spiritual appetite did not improve.  Human development does not equal progress in God’s book.  Unless there is a deeper experience of the character of God in human actions, the result is always the same – destruction.

In the days of Noah, human sustenance was no savior.  In the days of Lot, human enterprise meant nothing.  There is only one Rescuer in this world and He is also the Judge.  We can walk without Him for awhile, but the end is inevitable.  Life is intended to reflect the character of the Creator.  Anything less is simply destruction in abeyance.

Today men are consumed with the Lot syndrome.  Money trumps everything.  Economic gain overwhelms all human dignity, compassion and mercy.  In this world, a man’s destiny is determined by his bank account.  That is, unfortunately, too often true in both directions.  The world lauds the rich while God holds them responsible for His intentions.  The fact that the world’s wealthiest 250 have more assets than the world’s poorest 2.5 billion is only one symptom of this cancer.  If I can keep a man’s entire family alive for a day on what I spend on a drink at McDonald’s, don’t you think God will ask me why I had to have that super-sized meal?  What will I say that could possibly excuse such selfishness?

In the days of Lot, Jesus reminds us, men thought the economic engine was their salvation.  But death came anyway.  Life and death are never in the hands of Man.  When we forget that our abundance has heavenly purposes, we live in Sodom, even if we claim to be moral.

Take that to the bank.