August 15, 2021 - The Story of Lot: The Danger of Worldliness and the Duty of Prayer // Genesis 19

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you [Music] hey welcome to summit online if this is your first time joining us i just want to say welcome we're really glad that you're here in fact go ahead and pull out your phone and text the word welcome to 33933 so someone from our team can connect with you summit online is a platform that aims to reach people with the gospel and help them take their next step with christ so let me tell you some ways to watch and engage with us option one you can join the live chat on sunday mornings at live.summitchurch.com come connect with other online viewers engage with the message and even pray with a live host option two join or host a home gathering and watch on demand on our youtube channel for resources on hosting your own home gathering visit summitchurch.com next steps and click on service resources and of course our end goal for you is that you'd be investing in a local church near you if you live in the raleigh-durham area be sure to check out all of our locations at summitchurch.com locations or if you don't text welcome to 33933 to connect with us and we'll help you find a church near you service will begin in just a moment so grab your bible and notebook and get ready to worship with us today we're really glad you're here [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] summit family we're so glad that you're here today for another week of summit online and if this is your first time here i just want to welcome you the summit exists to be a movement of disciple making disciples and we'd love to have you join us in that in fact do us a favor right now and pull out your phone and text the word welcome to 33933 it will ask you for some information and then someone from our team will reach out to connect with you and help you take your next step and as you're doing that i want to remind all of us that our week of prayer is right around the corner it's happening august 22nd through the 28th so listen prayer doesn't just fuel the ministry prayer is the ministry that's good you can sign up to receive daily prayer prompts by simply texting prayer to 33933 or visit summitchurch.com prayer and join us yes a day and i actually once heard it said that nothing of eternal significance ever happens apart from prayer that's good so it really is the ministry and as we begin our time of worship together we want to take a moment to do just that today let's pray that god would awaken in us a fresh love for him it's okay to come hungry and desperate actually psalm 42 1-2 says as a deer pants for flowing streams so pants my soul for you oh god my soul thirsts for god for the living god what we need most is for god to meet us in this time and for him to stir in us a deeper love for jesus so would you pray that god would meet you in this time right now [Music] [Music] [Music] my soul come away [Music] to hunger to seek to think [Music] first [Music] you did at first [Music] is [Applause] [Music] [Music] to overflow [Music] to overflow [Music] beauty [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] my is [Music] [Music] is [Music] god [Music] my [Music] oh [Music] my [Music] to overflow [Music] won't you pour out your spirit [Music] [Music] amen amen let's continue in this posture of worship as we take the lord's supper together go ahead and take a moment to find elements that you can use in your home while we typically use some form of bread and juice feel free to just make do with with whatever you have in your house these elements really are just symbols and just a reminder that taking communion is reserved for those who believe in christ's broken body and poured out blood for the forgiveness of sins but if you have yet to believe you can do that today by texting the word ready to 33933 the lord jesus on the night he was betrayed took the bread and when he had given thanks he broke it and said this is my body which is for you do this in remembrance of me let's take and eat in the same way after supper he took the cup saying this cup is the new covenant in my blood do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me let's drink for as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup you proclaim the lord's death until he comes amen let's remember and worship that beautiful name jesus christ our king yes [Music] [Music] one with god the lord most high you're hidden glory in creation [Music] now revealed and you are christ what a beautiful name it is what a beautiful name it is the name of jesus christ [Music] what a beautiful name it is and nothing compares to peace what a beautiful name it is the name of jesus [Music] oh you didn't want heaven without us so jesus brought heaven down oh my sin was great your love was great [Music] what could us now what a wonderful name it is what a wonderful name it is the name of jesus christ to my king what a wonderful name it is nothing compares to these what a wonderful name it is the name of jesus what a wonderful name it is the name of jesus [Music] how much [Music] [Music] death could not hold you the veil tore before you you silence the boast of sin and grave the heavens are right [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] yours is the kingdom [Music] [Music] what a powerful name it is [Music] yours is the kingdom [Music] [Music] and nothing can stand against what a powerful name it [Music] is the name of jesus what a powerful name it is the name of jesus [Music] welcome summit church at a bunch of different locations and campuses in the triangle from alamance county campus to our north durham campus and chapel hill campus and blue ridge campus and everywhere in between coming from our capitol hills campus i also know this weekend is a weekend that a lot of our college students begin to come back and so i don't know exactly how many of them we have but i would guess about half of them are back if you are grateful for our college students and graduate students that are returning would you put your hands together just to let them know how much we love them i will tell you our church is not the same without you all we miss you when you were gone which now feels like about 18 months that we haven't uh been able to see you but here we go i want to begin off this weekend with a little quiz okay a little quiz i'll it'll make more sense a little later here it is okay i'm going to get you to vote the question is which avenger series is the best okay uh you have the options a one division you have b falcon and the winter soldier or you have c loki you can vote by uplifted hand and if you are very passionate about your answer then you can do spirit fingers and that will let me know if you're at home you can just write it in the comments okay so if you think that one division is the best of the avengers series would you raise your hand all right that's a if you think it is the falcon of the winter soldier you can raise your hand anybody brave enough for that one or if you think it is loki you can raise your hand okay all right the correct answer was a one division uh which team here's number two has brought the most honor to the triangle is it a duke is it b unc or is it three north carolina state university all right if it's a would you raise your hand right now try not to yell uh if it is b unc raise your hand all right if it is c all unc students never following instructions right there just like i said if it's c north carolina state university if you would raise your hand and i know you can't help but doing this right there so that's okay why do i feel like there were wildly different reactions at some of our campuses just now for blue ridge campus i felt like it was one way chapel hill would have been another for me you're like which one was your hand up on you all know i cannot vote i love this church too much and i love my job too much to get a third of the church mad at me uh some of you will try to read a subliminal message from my choice of footwear but i promise you that is purely coincidental i asked our our team if they could make these shoes appear as different colors at different campuses carolina blue on screen at the chapel hill campus deep blue at our downtown durham campus and bright red at the blue ridge campus they said duke blue maybe but no chance of making these look bright red on camera okay all right question number three you are on a road trip and you have to stop for a meal you choose a wendy's b hardees or c panera okay if your vote is wendy's raise your hand okay if your vote is b hardy's raise your hand all right you have to choose one if it's c panera you can raise your hand the correct answer was d waffle house uh though i will say judges will give half credit for bee hearties um the frisco burger is a vastly underrated sandwich the nicholas cage of burgers i call it okay all right here's the next one who is the real spiderman is it a toby maguire is it b andrew garfield or is it c tom holland if you think it's a tobey maguire put your hand up all right if you think it is b andrew garfield you put your hand up if you think it is c tom holland now put your hand up the correct answer is a he is the only real actor out of all of them and now some of you are like i didn't know there's a right and wrong answers to these questions there always is in my book just so you know um some of you like i cannot believe that there wasn't a nicholas cage question out of these um that's a great point so here it is who is the greatest actor of all time all right is it a nicholas cage is it b nick cage or is it c cage nicholas okay right so well we know all of the above d all right all right well those are the five questions that i opened my message at student camp with this year and i shared them because i'm going to preach a version of that same message to us as a church today because i think it is a word for us also so genesis 19 if you have your bibles genesis 19 if you'll take them and open them they uh the the students did about as well as you did um you've raised your your sons and daughters wisely and how they vote uh because that was uh pretty similar okay all right so genesis 19 to remind you we had 71 students that made a first time decision for christ first time decision for christ this year at camp and that's not just by the way hands raised or prayers prayed but that is a decision they took initiative with to talk to a leader about and we have had several more since then decisions some of our students for example on the football team at one of our local high schools got burdened for one of the guys on their team and started to pray for him and just a few days ago we're able to lead him to faith in christ so summer church god is doing something amazing among our students and uh we're super excited about it and i think the passage that we're going to look at um today has as much to say to us the church regarding our responsibility to them as it does their response toward god and so and because god is doing so much i wanted us to spend some time there to go to a place that many of them have already been okay plus this passage addresses a focus that myself and some of our leaders have really sensed the holy spirit calling us to this fall and that is prayer because we are beginning to regather in person after after lockdown we have said the fall is going to be a little bit like a relaunch and we've sensed that the holy spirit is calling us as we relaunch our church so to speak he is calling us to lay in prayer at the foundation prayer has always been a building block it's always been important at the summit church but but we want to lay it in at the foundation this time uh one of the distinguishing features of who we are um and so that's what we're doing and i'm going to spend a couple of weeks on this subject um speaking of many of you know that i have a new book out called just ask i actually showed it to you a couple of weeks ago it's a practical book that i wrote for you a summit church on how to pray and how to overcome obstacles to prayer these are available now at your campuses i want to remind you if you're new around here that nothing we ever sell here profits me or any other pastor all the money from the sale of these items goes back into the ministries of the church i always say god did not call me here to make money off of you um no i wanted to write this book first and foremost as a service to you and as your pastor since i know this is one of the areas that many christians are most unhappy with and when i talk to people and they're like what i i need to grow in and i ask them that that's one of the things you always mention is is how to pray and so it just coincides with with the fall and so those are available if it would be a help to you okay at any rate this passage genesis 19 touches on our responsibility as a church to pray for our students for each other for our community and i believe it is what the holy spirit is saying to our church right now so genesis 19. this is the story of abraham and his young nephew lot abraham's nephew lot let me just catch you up on the story as we get into genesis 19 okay let me catch you up on the story as we come into genesis 19. abraham abraham and his nephew lot are having a problem and that problem is they um they're trying to co-exist in an area that's just too small and their shepherds were fighting there was just not enough space for them to all live comfortably together they were fighting over the best watering holes and the best pasture lands i kind of like if you and your sibling tried to share a room when you were growing up how many of you how many of you did that growing up or are doing that now all right your little brother was always leaving this stuff on on your side of the room he was always in the bathroom when you needed it he never flushed he he left his dirty socks on your side of the uh of the closet it was like that and it was clear that abraham and lot needed some space so abraham takes lot up high on this mountain overlook and he says lot god has promised to give our family all of this land so you go one direction and i'll go the other he let lot choose first now all the land was was good but the land to the east of where they were standing was incredible genesis 13 10 says in fact that it looked like the garden of eden itself the pastures were green and fertile there were lots of places of water and shade the problem the problem was that it stretched out toward two notorious cities cities notorious for their wickedness sodom and gomorrah listen to how the writer of genesis describes these cities he says and the people of this area were extremely wicked and constantly sinned against the lord right so these these were bad news but that that was not very concerning to lot lot just like the vibe in fact of these cities there was just so much money and culture and activity that he wanted to be a part of so lot chose the land towards sodom and verse 12 abram lived in the land of canaan while lot lived among the cities of the plain and pitched his tents near sodom turned out to be a bad choice for light in fact shortly after he got there raiders from sodom came and stole all of his stuff and took him and his family captive abraham ben mounts chapter 14 a kevin costner-style vigilante posse to go and rescue him and you might think that after that lot would have learned his lesson but lot just loved sodom so he moved back there pitching his tents even closer this time to sodom in fact soon enough lot moved into the city itself so that when chapter 19 opens we find that lot was chapter 19 verse 1 sitting in the gateway of the city sitting in the gateway is an old testament way of saying that lot had become a leader he'd become a leader because that's where the leaders of the city sat so as chapter 19 opens lot is not only living near sodom he is a leader in sodom he is popular there look at verse 7 speaking to the men of sodom he says i beg you my brothers he calls the men of sodom his brothers they are his people now sodom is where he feels most at home you know you have to wonder what compromises lot made in order to be accepted in sodom right i mean to be fair it seems that lot never went along with the worst wickedness inside him in fact it it seems like he kept most of his major morals intact but it's also clear that he made a bunch of small compromises and if you read chapter 19 in more detail you'll see a lot of them maybe most tragically he left he kept his mouth mouth completely shut about his identity as god's servant and his faith in god chapter 18 opens telling us that sodom and gomorrah their wickedness had gotten so bad that god decided to destroy these cities with fire but as a favor to abraham god sent a couple of angels down to warn abraham before he did it as the angels are telling abraham about the coming judgment abraham immediately begins to think about lot and by the way god had taken on a human body and was actually there i'm with those angels there were three of them and so um god is telling abraham what he's about to do and abraham doesn't want to see the city destroyed and so that triggers this conversation chapter 18 verse 23 abraham stepped forward forward and said god are you really going to sweep away the righteous with the wicked what if there are 50 righteous people in the city you could not possibly do such a thing to kill the righteous with the wicked will not the judge of all the earth do what is just god says yes abraham if you could find 50 righteous then i would spare the entire city abraham thinks about it for a second he says well suppose the 50 righteous lack five just like five will you destroy the whole city for lack of five now abraham seems to be a pretty shrewd negotiator for what it's worth god surely we're not gonna kill this deal over five people right so god says okay abraham if you can find 45 i will spare the city. abraham says how about 30. god says i'll spare it for the sake of 30. verse 31 abraham says how about 20. abraham's starting to sound like an auctioneer and they give me 40 give me 30. give me 20. he's just moving through it verse 32. how about 10 how about 10 and god answered i would not destroy it on a count of 10. but abraham could not find even 10 righteous in the city you've got lot and his wife and his two daughters that would be four but they don't seem to have persuaded anybody else there and sodom to turn away from their wickedness so so the negotiation ends nevertheless in response to abraham's prayer for lot god sends angels to warn lot the whole negotiation had been about preserving light so in 19 15 the angels show up at lot's house just two of them now god's going back to heaven assumedly um they show up in lot's house and sodom and they say lot hurry take your wife and your two daughters who are here or you will be swept away when the city is punished yet even then yet even then it says after hearing about this coming judgment that is just moments away verse 16 says that lot hesitated even when he's heard that everybody is about to be destroyed by fire from heaven he is so in love with the world that he can't leave it these are his people these are his brothers finally verse 16 says that one of the angels seized his hand and the hands of his wife and his two daughters and rushed them to safety outside the city because the lord was merciful lot literally at verse 16 lot literally had to be dragged from the city that's how much he loves it that's how much he has made it his home as they're leaving the angels warn lot and his family not to look back on the city as god rains down fire upon it but lot's wife we don't know her name but lot's wife was just so enraptured with the city so in love with the city that she could not keep her eyes off of it and when she turned to look back verse 26 god turned her immediately into a pillar of salt salt here serves as a symbol salt dries things out right what happens when you eat too much salt it makes you thirsty turning lot's wife into a pillow of salt is a symbol of what's happened to her and lot and their family spiritually they may still technically be believers but they're so dried out spiritually they have no life for joy left in them at all and so in the end lot is saved by the skin of his teeth but he loses everything including his wife what does this have to do with us let me give you four life-saving lessons that you can learn from lot four life-saving lessons to learn from lot number one number one there is a progression of sin in your life there is a progression of sin in your life most christians do not intend to become sodom and gomorrah lot certainly didn't he never intended to make it his home and he certainly did not intend to be included in its judgment but many christians like lot are so attracted to the world that they make their home as close to it as possible and if they're honest they end up identifying as much with the world as they do with the people of god to be honest whom do you think of most instinctively as my brothers who do you feel the closest kinship with it's kind of an easy question to answer who do you hang out with most easily who do you spend most of your time with the lesson from lot's life is that you have to make up your mind from the beginning who do you really want to be where do you really want to belong if it's with the world go there a hundred percent if it's with god go with him 100 i've said this many times the most miserable person in the world is the half-committed christian who is just enough in the world to be miserable in god and just enough into god that they're miserable in the world that's what you're seeing with light your heart is filled with salt so to speak and it's not in a good way you feel dry and lifeless everywhere charles spurgeon used to say if you're going to be saved be saved 100 because the worst thing to do is to try to try to straddle two opinions you can't keep trying to to walk along with your feet in both worlds it's kind of like when you're standing on a dock you're standing on a dock with one foot in a boat and and the boat starts to drift away you ever been in that moment there's this like split second decision where you got to make up your mind am i in the boat or am i on the dock because you're kind of standing there in both and you got to go one way or the other because if if you try to stand there and straddle them both you can end up tearing yourself apart or quote the old chinese proverb him who try to walk down both sides of road will split his pants you've got to choose one of the other first john 2 15 makes it clear love not the world don't love the world neither of the things that are in the world if any person loves the world the love of the father is not in him in other words it's not just about your behavior it's about your heart don't just evaluate your behavior congratulating yourself that you're not doing all the bad things that other sodom people do the question is what do you love where are you pitching your tents metaphorically speaking and what does that say about what your heart really desires the worst place to be is to try to be in both are you trying to get as close to the world as you can without becoming it just like with lot there is a progression of sin in your life that starts with loving the world and ends up with total destruction and you likely never see it coming be honest with yourself has this happened to you high school middle school students i know some of you were at camp but let me just ask you again at first you you were alarmed at the things that that unsaved friends around you said and it made you feel uncomfortable or it made you feel dirty when you saw sin depicted in movies or you heard it in music but eventually you got okay with it then you started hanging out with people who were doing those things then you started to do those things or at first you were more concerned you were genuinely concerned with your friends who did not know jesus you prayed for them you prayed for them but eventually it just got weird trying to tell them that they needed to be saved i mean who says that when they're in high school and so you just stopped bringing it up and now you don't even pray for them instead of being somebody who warns them about coming judgment on on sodom or the world and calls them to escape it you've made your home there with them and your life now is virtually indistinguishable from theirs they never feel the slightest bit of discomfort around you because you never warn them about it and one day you look up and you've never really told them about jesus or explain to them in any meaningful way that they need to be saved years ago i i read the disturbing account of how they they kill wolves out on the tundras of siberia um the people that live up there if there's a wolf that is harassing the their settlement or or um or or killing a lot of the seals up there it's one of the things that they um they raise and grow um they'll they'll take a um a knife a very two edge a very sharp two-edged knife and they will dip it in seal's blood and uh because it's so cold it just immediately freezes and so they do it again and again until it's several layers thick so it's become just think of it like a like a blood popsicle stick and then they bury that knife um so that it's just the handle that's under the ground and just the the two-edged blade that's sticking up but coated now with all this blood and so the the wolf comes along and he gets the scent of seal's blood well he just loves that smell and so he goes over to it and he begins to lick this blade of a knife of course not realizing it's a blade of a knife just thinking it seals blood and as he begins to lick this blood off of this knife blade it it numbs his tongue so that when that he be the blade begins to to to be exposed his tongue now his tongue now numb from from all that cold is just cutting itself into ribbons and he doesn't realize that the blood now all over the ground is not the seal's blood it's his blood and so he lacerates his tongue to the point that that he bleeds out to death and he goes away and he dies that's how they kill a wolf there there's a picture there of how satan destroys us is he he gives us just a little taste of it and you think this is not that bad and it gradually just numbs your soul gradually just numbs your soul until you get to a point where you cannot feel or sense it any longer you can't feel it or sense it any longer and so it's where you choose to make your home it's where you choose to pitch your tents right that is what you become like now you might ask you say well pastor are you saying we shouldn't have any non-christian friends i mean we're saying we should separate ourselves from the world i'm not even sure how that's possible in my job or how it's possible at my school i mean i'm surrounded by unbelievers and didn't we just finish a series from the book of daniel about thriving in babylon isn't that the same thing as saying thriving in sodom yes that is a very astute question god calls us to be in the world but not to make our home there there's a difference in living in the world and making your home there you say well how can i be around sodom but not commit the mistake of life it's got to do with whom you choose to make your close friends whom you choose to make your community the ones that you make your inner circle are where you pitch your tents you see scripture says that whom you hang around with is who you become like proverbs 13 20 he who walks with wise men will be wise but a companion of fools will be destroyed a friend of mine says it this way you show me your friends and i'll show you your future because if you hang out with wise people you become wise but if you're a companion of fools then you become like them and you will be destroyed he says he says you will become the average of your five closest friends take your five closest friends right now average them together and that's what you will be in in the next few years you show me your friends and i'll show you your future you you save a pastor are you saying we shouldn't have any non-christian friends no i'm not saying that but there's a difference between core community and those that you're trying to reach in fact i've heard it explained like this you should think of your your friendship in three circles the first circle right around you is what we call your circle of intimacy and that's going to be like people that speak into your life people you're very close to best friend um if you're dating it's the person you're dating it's the person that you're married to you're going to marry that's a circle of intimacy then you've got a layer of friends around that we'll call that your circle of influence those are people that you're doing life with them these would be people in your small group people that you work with people you hang out with you're influencing them and they're influencing you and you've got to circle around that that we call the circle of concern and those are people that you're trying to reach out to and you're trying to share the gospel with the point of the circle of concern is to reach out to them and to warn them you're actively you're you're reaching out to them that inner circle what it say that inner circle that's where your jesus loving friends are in fact they they they make up all the people in that middle that's that central circle and then the ones on the the layer outside of those the majority of those end up being believers because that's who you become like that's who influences you the point of that outer circle is that you are are building bridges with them and sharing christ with them the point of that circle of concern that's where those who are not believers that's where you have them you're trying to warn them um you're trying to influence them at the summit we encourage you to have a one we say who's your one one person outside the faith that you're building a relationship with and praying for that's that's that circle you gotta decide the point is you gotta decide who you want to be you got to decide where you want to go and then you have to pitch your tents there you have to surround yourself with that community all right where do you want to belong and is your choice of community going to lead you there how long are you gonna go back and forth between two worlds i'll say it again the most miserable person in the world is the half-committed christian just enough in the world that they're miserable in god and just enough into god that they're miserable in the world their soul is salty their soul is salty dry famished miserable you've got to choose the side of the road and jesus by the way does not look very kindly on uh favorably on the half committed either he says in revelation i wish you a cold or hot you lukewarm tepid makes me want to spit you out of my mouth listen he loves you but he wants you to be one way or the other a lot of our students think that they get their high school and college years just to play around with the world and put god off until later that's not true where you pitch your tents in sodom when you do that it gets harder and harder to leave you've got to choose who you want to belong to you've got to decide whether jesus is worthy of the offering of your life or not and then go one way or the other and if you decide that he is worthy then the most practical application of that will be who you choose to make your closest friends or who you choose to date because your home is going to be the most shaping influence on your kids and you so if you're a christian make up your mind that you're only going to date committed christians right there's a progression of sin and it never starts in sodom it starts by moving along that journey number two number two lot teaches us that the coming judgment is real coming judgment is real for years for years god had warned sodom and gomorrh about the coming judgment but everybody brushed it off as unreal and went back to partying but god makes no empty promises one day it came god tells us that he is slow in executing judgment in order to give people space to repent but do not confuse his slowness with his absence or his sluggishness on fulfilling a promise hebrews 9 27 says it is appointed unto man wants to die and after that the judgment it is appointed there is a day that has been chosen for each of us to die and that day is coming it happens sometimes way premature based on our calendar i one of the defining moments in my spiritual journey happened when i was about 15 and one of the kids that i grew up with whose name was jamie had i mean he was really popular he was hilarious he was smart he had everything going for him he had no thought at all about god we were at a christian school and he just didn't he just not somebody walking with jesus and right after he got his license he was 16. i was 15. he got a car wreck and and uh was um his life just tragically taken away and i remember standing there at his funeral looking at this casket god was at work in my life and thinking he is now in eternity he is in eternity and the only thing that matters right now is where he stood with god that was appointed to him to die and after that the judgment let's begin to think about did i ever talk to him did i ever tell him i knew what was right and what was wrong and maybe he maybe in these last few weeks maybe he came to know jesus i don't know but the point was at that point that's all that matters every person that you know is going to spend eternity in one of two places every person you know is going to spend eternity in one of two places did you know did you know that jesus talked more about hell than heaven have you ever thought about what that must be like if it's true if jesus was being straight with us you think well jesus didn't talk about that he did go back and read it jonathan edwards the 18th century american theologian he said this regarding jesus teaching on hell listen to this imagine he says if you take what he says seriously imagine yourself cast into a fiery oven glowing with heat imagine that your body was going to lie there for about a quarter of an hour full of fire inside and out feeling every fiber of it the whole time what horror would you feel at the entrance of such a furnace when you entered such a furnace how long would that quarter of an hour seem to drag on if it was measured by an hourglass how slowly would the time seem to go and after you had endured it for one minute how overbearing would it be for you to think that you had another 14 minutes left but what if you knew that you must lie there enduring that torment in its fullness for 24 hours how much greater even if you knew you must endure it for a whole year how much greater steel if you knew you must endure it for a thousand years wouldn't your heart sink if you knew you must bear it forever and ever that there would be no end that after millions and millions of ages your torment would be no nearer to an end than before and that you should never ever be rescued but your torment in hell will be immeasurably greater than this if jesus was telling the truth how utterly inexpressible and inconceivable how your heart and soul would sink in such a case the question you ask yourself if you believe this is how do you call somebody your friend if you believe this but you've never warned them what will your friends say to you at the judgment day if you just never told them i mean can you imagine them looking at you and saying what you you you knew this and you never even spoke up i've told you before about a girl that i was sharing christ with a young lady i was sharing christ with she'd never heard the gospel i'm walking through and and we were back and forth he was asking all these questions and she'd been educated at some ivy league school and we were and she said she says you actually believed this and i said well yeah she said because you don't act like you believe it i said what do you mean i'm i'm trying to explain it to you i'm trying to persuade you of it she said no no you act like you're trying to win a debate you act like there's a score card and you're trying to get more points than than on your side than i have on my side she said if i believe what you say that you believe that there is a real heaven and a real hell and only jesus makes the difference she said i don't know how i'd make it through the day she says i know i would go to every person that i know and i would plead with them but they had to pay attention and you you're just talking about it as if it's something you're trying to win a debate you're trying to to finish what will your friend say to you on the day of judgment they would they say how could you call me friend and just stay silent and not speak lot's life shows us that coming judgment is real and it's coming for those that are around us and the greatest hypocrisy of all time the saying that you believe in heaven and hell and not doing everything you can to keep those you care about from going there number three number three lot's life shows you that you cannot drift into godliness you can't drift into godliness again lot did not make a deliberate choice to make sodom his home he just drifted there listen i need you to understand this living for jesus in this world is always going to feel to you like an uphill battle because you are going against the current of the entire world and everything in the world is going to pull you in the other direction which means if you're not actively fighting it means you're being pulled the wrong way there's no such thing as drifting into the right areas if you've ever been at the beach and gotten pulled way down shore by the current you didn't even know what was happening you're just out riding your rafter body surfing and jumping in the waves and you look up and somehow you're not 15 houses down the coast they don't know where your family is anymore that's like the pull of our world if you're not actively fighting you're drifting away to go with jesus means you have to swim against the stream that takes effort jesus said it this way in the gospel of matthew he says the highway to hell is broad its gate is wide for the many who choose that way but the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult and only a few ever find it it's broad it's easy it's the default if you're not actively choosing the difficult way you're just being pulled along the broad way so again i'll say it you cannot drift into godliness you'll never drift into spiritual maturity or into leadership that takes daily focused effort to become what no one else is becoming you got to do what nobody else is doing you got to be different in student camp i mentioned a couple of ways i see some of our teenagers that are tempted to drift not intending to get to sodom but just just drifting places where they're drifting when they ought to be fighting i would say these apply just as much to the rest of us especially us as parents drifting drifting is not actively seeking to know god in his word i look around at our students it's not that you reject the bible you just give all your time to snapchat tick-tock instagram reels netflix binging video games and comparatively none to spiritual growth you don't do a daily quiet time you're you're not in the leadership cohorts we offer or take advantage of the discipleship and mission opportunities we have you spend all your time on snapchat staring at life in sodom broad is the gate that leads to destruction and easy is that way and so many just drift along that way parents your family is not going to drift into godliness you know that right the current of the world will always take them quickly away from god listen i'm always disturbed by the stats on high school students who grew up in churches like ours and and then leave it behind and i know you're disturbed by that too and i know these are listen complex questions we never fix blame i mean god created only two humans directly and they both walked away so i'm not at all trying to if you've had a kid walk away i'm not saying it's your fault but i will say that for many christian teenagers the transition out of church is not that difficult because the families they grew up in were not that much different from the world sure you were regular in church but you basically live by the same values you spent your money like the world spends their money you allocated your time like the world allocates their time the only major difference in your life is that you added church attendance on the weekend so when the kid goes off to college it's pretty easy to discard that habit they felt more at home in sodom anyway that was where they built their entire community listen parents you know that church is a really difficult habit to maintain if god is not a passion for you i mean you got to get up on sunday morning and you got to get dressed and you got to find a parking space and sit with a bunch of strangers we're going to tell you church is a terrible habit if god is not a passion for you that is an easy habit to drop if a child doesn't see jesus as the center and the passion of your life the church is all together easy to just drop out of when you get to college and beyond again your family parents your family will not drift into godliness to become what nobody else in our world is becoming you got to do what nobody's doing i told our students at camp we need a generation committed to go against the flow i challenge them to be that group that goes against the current together to get on a text stream with their friends and say let's be the group of friends that's different let's check on each other about how our quiet times are let's pray for each other let's hold each other accountable on things like sexual purity or sharing christ with our friends let's pray for our friends hold each other accountable and reading the bible let's prioritize being a small group and serving in student ministry and doing even when it's lazier and easier to stay at home students why not do that parents why not make the same commitment and how we lead our families jesus will come first and that he will be the living breathing center of all that we do so see that's one way i see christian teenagers drifting when they ought to be fighting here's the other drifting drifting will be not warning your friends about coming judgment not only like lot are you becoming more and more indistinguishable from sodom you never warn the people in your sodom about the judgment you believe or you say you believe is coming he's too embarrassed or you don't want to be seen as too extreme or a radical hey news flash okay the message is radical judgment is coming what's going on with sodom and gomorrh is not altogether different from what god says the end of time is like and only those he says found in christ can be saved will be saved how could you say you believe that and not tell somebody you say you care about how could you call them a friend and not have your heart broken and say what is it how it's going to pray for you and i can't force it on you i know that but i don't want you showing up on judgment day and i've never even spoken to you to warn you how much do you have to hate somebody not to even warn them god puts you in their lives to be a warning to be his messenger to them to tell them about that coming judgment and that day of salvation in jesus that's offered to them how could we let an unwillingness to be seen as different or let a unwillingness to be seen as a little weird keep us from warning them which leads me to the last lesson from lot here number four become an abraham to the lots in your life i mentioned that when it was time for lot to flee sodom when judgment was just moments away a lot hesitated and when he did verse 16 tells us the angel seized his hand in the hands of his wife and his two daughters and and pulled them to safety outside the city because it says verse 16 the lord was merciful here's a question why did god have the angels do this for a lot i mean by this point lodge seems to be as bad as everybody else in sodom in fact you could argue that he's worse because he should have known better he he'd been warned continuously about the wickedness of sodom but he ignored it so in a way he's more guilty than everybody else right not less why do the angels grab his hands and drag him and his family and only them to safety why verse 29 tells you the answer but god had listened to abraham's request and kept lot safe removing him from the disaster that engulfed the cities on the plane friends listen this is a life changer there was one reason one that god saved lot in his family abraham had prayed for them lot did not deserve rescue but somewhere back there there was a man who loved him and prayed for him and for his sake abraham's sake god saved lot he sent his angels to literally pull him out of sodom to safety now eventually lot would come to understand this and lot would turn in repentance toward god that's what the book of jude tells us in the new testament but the point is that began because god sent angels in response to abraham's prayer and pulled literally pulled him out when when they begin to pull him out he hesitates and when he hesitates the angels pull even harder why because abraham prayed you know if abraham hadn't prayed it seems a lot would have perished along with everybody else in sodom could we get a clearer picture of the power of prayer yo i know that i'm here i'm here before you today because i had a mom who prayed for me i've told you before i um another one of the defining moments of my life was a car wreck that took place when i was i actually was it was just in the process of becoming a christian and my friends and i had taken a um an all-weekend ski trip and we were coming back trying to make it back for church on sunday morning and about 5 a.m and you say why were you driving at 5am that's a great question we should not have been so all right i'll just go ahead and acknowledge that but um i was in the back seat of this um mustang asleep because my friend was driving everybody in the car was asleep including the guy that was driving and that became the problem and uh coming down highway 421 and um next thing i i woke up and remember feeling like man it's really cold in here is my friend had the window down and for some reason just switched my head from one side of the car to the other i had no reason just felt more comfortable and um just in a few moments it was 5 16 when that happened at 5 18 my friend went 75 miles an hour hit a mattress on the side of the road i have no idea how there was a mattress on the side of the road but he hit a mattress on the side of the road skidded for about 200 yards and then went off in a ravine and the car rolled and it crushed on the side that my head had been on just a few moments before i remember as we i got out of this car and we get up there and looking up i just was overwhelmed standing on this thing and how close i'd come to dying the next morning i got to church and told my mom hey we were in this terrible wreck last night and she said what time that happened i said well it happened at 5 18. i remember that because i'd woken up and look at the clock just a couple moments before it happened she said you know she said it's really interesting she said i i wasn't quite sure where you were i trusted you but i didn't know where you were she said at five o'clock this morning she said i just woke up and i had this burden to pray for you and she said i just got up and she said i prayed for about 30 minutes pray for about 30 minutes then i went back to sleep i share that for two reasons number one if god ever wakes you up at like five in the morning with a burden to pray for me i'd really appreciate it if you would do it okay the number two is to tell you that god god uses people who pray to pull people out of safety you see that was part of a longer prayer journey that my mom had been on for two or three years praying that god would open my eyes because she said everything she knew how to say to me they'd done everything they knew how to do at the end of the day she said i can't pull my son out of this attraction he has to the world and she prayed me into the kingdom of god i had a mother who prayed for me and pulled me out of sodom and one of the books that veronica my wife and i used to pray for our kids it's called praying for your children the author tells a story of a lady in his church a lady in his church who was named sarah who got a phone call one evening listen to this the voice on the other end of the line when she answered the phone and said mom the good news is i've become a christian sarah the mother said what's the bad news the story that followed was one no parent ever hopes to hear sarah's son had been caught smuggling drugs in the trunk of his car across straight state lines there was little doubt he would be found guilty and it looked like robert the son would go to prison for years sarah had [Music] had done her best to raise her son to believe in jesus every sunday of his young life found them at church but the lure of wealth and the world pulled him into a place sarah never imagined still she placed robert in god's hands day by day and loved him through her prayers after he repented after he'd been caught in sentence sarah still grieved the mistakes he'd made but she was grateful to see a sincere new faith in him and thought that would be better even if he has to go to prison when the case against robert was dismissed on a technicality nobody was more surprised than sarah and no one was more pleased as her son continued steadfastly in following jesus it was four day decades later this pastor writes that i've met robert sarah was celebrating her 81st birthday and her children and grandchildren had gathered around her to reminisce the air was full of laughter as one by one they shared their stories when robert stood to speak he was doing his best to hold it together he talked with profound tenderness about his mom speaking of her like somebody who literally saved his life you might have noticed from their shared glances that there was a special understanding between mom and son like two people who had returned from a long and difficult journey with a story known only to each other robert wrapped up his eulogy of his mother with the words of a well-known poem you may have tangible wealth untold caskets of jewels and coffers of gold richer than i you can never be because i had a mother who prayed for me that's our role and i've got even more good news for you and i can pray for others with even more power than abraham did remember abraham's prayer we ran through it it was like a negotiation lord spare for 50 45 how about 30 20. finally abraham gets a tan he can't he just gives up because he can't even find 10 righteous here's the good news you and i need look no farther than one you and i can pray for lost friends in the name of one righteous there is one righteous and he is so supremely righteous so all together perfect and lovely that god says we can pray for the lost of the lost prodigal and the lost of the lost sinner and for his sake that one righteous man's sake jesus god hears our prayers and delivers our friends or our siblings or our parents or whomever we have set our love on i can come say that one righteous that is so supremely righteous is enough to move god to say i'll spare him for his sake if you pray friend jesus did this for us he prayed for us right he came after us now it's our turn to do that for our friends so here's a question are you ready is this church ready to become an abraham to the lots in your life each of you have lots and god says through your prayers you pull them out of that city so i'm gonna give you a three-part invitation as i do in fact let me go ahead and ask our prayer counselors i'm gonna ask our pastoral teams come up here and get into place because i have a few i have a few questions i i'm gonna present to you okay three for some of you you need to get saved you've never trusted in christ you've never received jesus let's just say get saved to get serious you've been playing with the world and you've got to decide right now this weekend i'm going to follow jesus that's who i'm going to be about i'm going to invite you in just a minute when i stand you up i don't invite you to step out of whatever campus you're in and come up here and take the hand of one of these prayer team members if you're at home you can text the word ready to 33933 and somebody will be back in touch with you you just come up here and take one of these and say i'm ready to to follow jesus i'm gonna invite secondly some groups of you especially our high school students middle school students if you're with friends why don't you come and just coven it just get around this altar or maybe turn around at your seat and turn that into an altar and covenant that we're going to we're going to be that group that's different and we're going to swim upstream and we're going to be the role that god has told us to be and the sodom that he's placed us in that's the second invitation here's the third invitation it's for all of us to think about the lot in your life that you need to be in abraham too we're going to end this weekend just by turning this every campus into a tabernacle of prayer what lot in your life do you need to be an abraham to i want to invite you to come up here and pray for them or yes you can stay in your seat and you can pray but i will tell you it sometimes means more to physically move and adopt a posture that just declares your dependence on god we've got husbands and wives and you come up here and pray for children you've got groups of people who come and pray for a friend we got wives that need to pray for husbands husbands that need to pray for wives people they need to pray for neighbors i'm not as concerned as to where you pray but i'm saying let's turn this into an altar of prayer and so i'm going to invite you okay when i stand up i'll invite you to do one of those three things everybody in here should be responding in some way if you need to come to christ when you stand up just come and take the hand of one of these if you need somebody to pray with you just come and pray with one of these otherwise let's pray there at your seat or even better come up around the altar and let's call these names of lot out to god okay i'm going to ask at all of our campuses why don't you go ahead and stand and right now let's just begin to move right now begin to move and let's just come up and fill these altars and let's begin to pray all right just turn this place into a tabernacle of prayer as you're moving as you're moving okay i've got one more some of you god's dealing with you about actually going into ministry you're like look a message like this this is what happened to me i got gripped when i was in high school in college and i said i just want to i want to i want to give my whole life to this i want you to tell one of your campus pastors listen as people are coming to pray and i invite more of you as you do that let me just say this to all of us we want to be a praying church in just a minute your campus pastors are going to tell you about more opportunities we got a gathering every monday at every campus and i want to invite you to be a part of it i'm here at the one at capitol hills campus pretty regularly they'll see about that many other opportunities but right now let's just take a few moments and let's turn this into a place of prayer and then our worship teams will come and they'll lead us you pray for the next several moments for the lots that are in your life [Music] [Music] [Music] summit as pastor jd just challenged us we have three ways that you can respond today first some of you need to get saved yeah today could be yeah you've been running from god and he's been calling you to himself if you're ready to do that today text the word ready to 33933 and someone from our team will actually reach out and help you take that next step or maybe today's message is prompting you to take a step in prayer either for yourself or for the lots in your life there is so much power in prayer don't just tell yourself you'll pray about it later do it right now right right now and the moment we're going to sing another song take that time to either click request prayer and pray with one of our live hosts right now that's so cool or gather together and pray right where you are we want to be a people of prayer so do that right now as you are let's continue in worship [Music] i surrender to [Music] holding nothing withholding nothing i surrender all to you [Music] everything i give to you holding nothing withholding nothing [Music] everything i get everything i give [Music] holding nothing holding nothing withholding nothing holding nothing when i surrender [Music] everything i give to you [Music] holding nothing holding the things [Music] [Music] [Music] i give you all of me i give you all of me i give you all of me [Music] king jesus foreign [Music] [Music] jesus [Music] jesus [Music] me [Music] to you everything i give to you [Music] summit family thank you so much for joining us today two quick things before you leave an element of being a disciple is actually being a good steward and we're able to steward the resources from the summit church and offer them digitally here at summit online because of your giving so you can give a one-time gift or even set up reoccurring giving by simply texting give to 33933 and for our members who already faithfully give you have the opportunity in a few weeks to vote on next year's budget you can see an overview of it and submit any questions you have at summitchurch.com members summit church summit family you are sent [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Summit RDU

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Length: 77min 6sec (4626 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 14 2021