• The Word of God contrasts righteousness with wickedness, which is the conduct of someone who is selfish, self-centered, full of pride, and neither have respect for God nor man.
• Since we all love to be told a Bible story I’m going to paraphrase the devastation, desolation, and destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah to the time of sin that is in our earth today.
• Let us see and determine whether the same sin and wickedness is on the earth today in our midst.
• As for the Church, what are we doing about it? Or do we even care to consult the Lord about it to do something about it through you?
• Has the sin of this world come before the Spirit of God just as it had done in the days of Noah and in the city of Sodom and Gomorrah, and its surrounding cities?
• Some of us are so busy teaching, preaching, prophesying, lying, and ministering Salvation in the areas of blessings, miracles, and materialistic possessions and stuff.
• We ignore sin and transgression because of fear, compromise, and weakness spiritually.
• We name and claim everything that is supposedly good to us and for us but turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to the sin and evil wickedness of others to get along with everyone.
• Afterwards you should be able to better evaluate yourself to see you, yourself as being righteous or unrighteous according to the Word of God and His righteousness. Not man’s righteousness but God’s righteousness only.
What is righteousness? In its spiritual meaning it is the quality of being in right standing in the eyes of God, in character (nature), conscience (attitude), conduct (action), and in word.
• Righteousness is not a manmade standard but is God’s laws and standards according to His Word. He is the ultimate Lawgiver.
Isaiah 33:22 For the LORD is our judge, the LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is our king; He will save us.
• Righteousness is a key attribute of God’s character, and His Word is the standard for spiritual human conduct.
• True righteousness is not humanly possible to attain own your own, but it is possible through Jesus Christ and His standards for being in right standing with God.
What does be in right standing with God mean? To have a right relationship with God or being in right standing before God.
• Right standing before God is a concept that refers to being in a right relationship with Him.
• Being in Christ through His birth, burial, and resurrection has made it possible for mankind to have right standing before God. This righteousness is to be followed by an upright life and lifestyle.
Romans 3:23-24 23 For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God; 24 Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
Hebrews 10:38 Now the just shall live by faith; but if anyone draws back, My soul has no pleasure in him.
• Living righteously is to live in a way that is morally and spiritually upright with God’s standards. It is a quality that only the spiritual part of you possesses once he is awakened by the heard Word of God.
• The Word of God will always point you to Salvation in and through the Gospel of Jesus Christ whether it be Old Testament or New Testament.

Let’s study Genesis 18:16-33; 19.
• God will not strike the righteous with the wicked. We are not treated alike!
18:16 The men rose up looking toward Sodom and Abraham went with them to bring then on the way.
18:17 God will not hide what He is going to do.
• Amos 3:7 KJV Amplified Surely the Lord God does nothing without revealing His secret plan [of judgment to come] to His servants the prophets.
• So, God tells Abraham His plan.
18:18 Seeing all that Abraham has in his loins: a great and mighty nation and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him.
• Are we blessed today because of God’s promise to Abraham?
18:19 God says that He knows Abraham. He knows that Abraham will follow His Will and Way. He will command his family and his family after him to keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment so that the Lord can bring upon Abraham that which He spoke of him.
• Are we doing what the Word of God command us today? Do we do what the Word has already been spoken and written for us to do?
• In Deuteronomy 4:9-10 and Joel 1:3 tells us to tell it to your children, and let your children tell their children, and their children to the next generation.
• Are we doing this? Or are we keeping our children so carnal minded and focused on the worldly cares and affairs?
18:20 The cry of sin and wickedness in Sodom and Gomorrah was great!
• Don’t think that sin is not great on the earth as well.
• And the stench of its smell in the earth is great.
18:21 The Lord God putting on a body to come into the earth to see this thing that has come to Him.
• This is not to say that God does not know everything and all things from His Throne, but to let you and I and the generations to come know that He is God and He is aware of the good and the evil in the earth.
18:22 The Lord stayed dialoguing with Abraham while the other two men (angels) went toward Sodom.
18:23 Abraham draws near to the Lord to ask Him a question. His question was “will you also destroy the righteous with the wicked?
• See the wicked don’t care about their end but the righteous do and should.
• The wicked creates evil and wickedness for all mankind to suffer with them and be in captivity with them.
• I always like to point out that the “lawmakers are the lawbreakers”. When a law, rule, or regulation is created by man, and it goes into effect they have already rigged it up to know how to break it or slip pass doing what they have called lawful.
18:24 Abraham began a count down with God once the Lord told him the reason for His presence.
• Abraham said perhaps there be 50 righteous within the city, will you also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous?
18:25 Abraham said to God this is not the nature of you to slay the righteous with the wicked. Abraham questioned Him to say should the Judge, the Creator of all the earth do, right?
• Righteousness is an attribute of God, His character.
18:26 The Lord answered Abraham saying if I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes.
• If means on the condition that; its conditional.
18:27 Abraham must let God know that he knows that he is mere dust and that he has taken it upon himself to speak to God this way.
• The same as we should be and do when we approach God’s presence.
18:28 Perhaps 5 of those 50 are lacking righteousness.
• In other words, they may have this, but don’t have that; they may have done this but have not done that of your Will.
• What will you do if 5 out of 50 are lacking?
• God answered still saying I will not destroy it if I find 45 righteous.
• Isn’t it amazing how God saw the world’s wickedness in the beginning with Noah and the sin of mankind. He destroyed it all with water after Noah, his family, and 2 of every kind of animal (male and female) was put in the Ark and God sealed the door.
18:29 Abraham asked again what if there is only 40 found righteous. God answered and said I will not destroy it for the forty sakes.
• 1 Peter 4:18-19 18 And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? 19 Wherefore let them that suffer according to the Will of God commit the keeping of their souls to Him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator.
18:30 Abraham says to the Lord don’t be angry and let me speak. Perhaps there be 30 found righteous in Sodom. God said, I will not do it, if I find thirty in there righteous.
• Let’s not get it twisted for God knows the heart of all men (male and female gender) and He does not make mistakes.
• God’s patience with us is miraculous and longsuffering to give us all an expected end. He knows our beginnings and our ending.
18:31 Abraham keeps taking it upon himself to keep questioning God, so he spoke again. Suppose you find 20 righteous souls in that place. God said I will not destroy it for twenty’s sake.
• All these questions that Abraham is asking should let everyone know that the old saying of “don’t question God” is a myth (a traditional, false belief).
• Just don’t let your questions “accuse God”. Let them be legitimate questions that deserve an answer to you from your Creator.
18:32 Abraham kept on speaking to God and asking God to not be angry with him, but perhaps 10 righteous be found there. And God said I will not destroy for ten’s sake.
18:33 The Lord went His way as soon as He left communing with Abraham and Abraham returned to his place.
• God came as one of the men encased in a body, but He didn’t physically go into Sodom with the two angels.
• We begin to go into Chapter 19 the Lord God was not with them It was only two men that went into Sodom.
19:1 Lot was sitting at the gate of Sodom. He saw the two angels, so he rose up to go meet them. He humbled himself and bowed.
19:2 Check out the humility of Lot for the two angels entering Sodom. Lot strongly offered the angels to spend the night at his house instead of sleeping in the open plaza of the city.
19:3 They entered Lot’s house where he made them dinner with drink and bread.
19:4 Before the angels laid down the men of the city of Sodom, both young and old, all men from every quarter surrounded Lot’s house.
19:5 They called Lot asking where was the men that came to his house tonight? Bring them out to us that we may be intimate with them.
19:6-7 Lot went out the doorway to say to the men, please my brothers do not do something wicked.
• Lot also went out to compromise sin for sin.
19:8 Lot was willing to compromise his two daughters who were virgins and give them to the men of Sodom, saying they can do as they please with them, but leave these men alone because they are under his roof.
• What kind of spirit was speaking through Lot? Certainly not a righteous spirit!
• Sin for sin is not being righteous
19:9-11 The men of Sodom became hostile toward Lot to the point of trying to knock the door down to get to the angels. But the angels reached out and pulled Lot back into the house with them and shut the door. They struck the men that were at Lots door with blindness.
19:12-13 The angels asked Lot did he have any others in Sodom: sons-in-law, sons, and daughters? Whomever you have in this city take them out of here for we are destroying this place, because the outcry for judgment against Sodom has greatly grown so great before the Lord that the Lord sent them to destroy and ruin it.
19:14 So, Lot went out to speak to his legally promised sons-in-law that have been chosen to marry his daughters to get up and get out of this place for the Lord is about to destroy this city. But he appeared to be a joke to his future sons-in-law.
19:15 When morning dawned, the angels urged Lot to hurry. Get up, take your wife and two daughters and go or they will be swept away in the punishment of the city.
Lot kept lingering and the angels (the men) grabbed him, wife, and daughters by the hand because the Lord was merciful to him. They took them outside the city and left them there.
19:17 The angels brought them forth and told them to escape for their life. Don’t look behind you or stop anywhere in the whole valley. They told them to escape to the mountains of Moab.
19:18
19:19
19:20
19:21
19:22
19:23
19:24
19:25
19:26
19:27
19:28
19:29
19:30

• Lot was able to leave for the sake of Abraham and Gods mercy.
• The prayers of the righteous availeth much. James 5:16 Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.

Amen

Wednesday, January 15, 2025