J. M. Boice said, “Many who have resisted a Christian’s logic have been won by his tears.” I can’t help but wonder if believers in today’s church are mired in a “tearless” Christianity. Without question our responses have been blunted to the open and unashamed sin that permeates our nation. Sexual immorality, unbridled violence, deceit and treachery fill the air waves, print media, and movie theaters. Even many of our elected officials, sports heroes, TV celebrities and opinion leaders in our communities “call evil good and good evil” (Isaiah 5:20). They embrace lifestyles and ideologies that remain censured by God’s word. We are seemingly indifferent, yet the Psalmist wrote “Rivers of waters run down mine eyes because they keep not thy law” (Psalm 119:136).
Sin does not seem to shock us anymore. It is no longer an unexpected visitor appearing on the scene of our daily routine, but rather, it has become a frequent and welcome guest at our table. So much so that we can no longer blush at its performance. Would to God that he would remove the callousness from our hearts that we might genuinely grieve over sin and its consequences. If only we could see sin as the Lord sees it – an affront to his holiness, the ruin of countless lives, the early messenger of hell itself. Perhaps then we would see the lost as Christ himself saw them, i.e. with true compassion. How needy we are before God and we do not know it!
Maybe one reason that we are so passive toward the expression of sin around us is that we have become “good neighbors” to it in our own lives. Lot, Abraham’s nephew, was guilty of this very thing. God was about to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah for its sins. Two angels were sent from God to Lot to deliver him from the city before fire and brimstone rained down. They told him “we will destroy this place, because the cry of them [the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah] is waxen great before the face of the LORD; and the LORD hath sent us to destroy it. Lot went out, and spake unto his sons in law, which married his daughters, and said, Up, get you out of this place; for the Lord will destroy this city. But he seemed as one that mocked unto his sons in law” (Genesis 19:13-14; emphasis added).
Lot seemed as “one that mocked.” His own life’s demeanor made his message of warning to seem as some kind of joke. How tragic! As a result, his sons in law died with the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah.
How would a warning against sin and its consequences sound coming from your lips? We can be sure that God will keep his word and judge sin even as he did Sodom and Gomorrah. In fact, Peter reminds his audience of God’s faithful judgment referring to those cities. “God…turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes condemned them with an overthrow, making them an example unto those that should after live ungodly” (2 Peter 2:4-6; emphasis added). Would our warning come as from “one that mocked”?
From the Chaplain 