2Peter 2:7-9a - Sustained By Grace

7-9a and if he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the licentiousness of the wicked 8 (for by what that righteous man saw and heard as he lived among them, he was vexed in his righteous soul day after day with their lawless deeds), 9a then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial...

This is the second half of the picture. Judgment is coming, but God knows how to take care of His own no matter the circumstances. There are trials for Christians that can make them want God to hasten the day when it is all over. But we are to trust in and wait upon God, Whose timing is always perfect.

The trials mentioned here are also called "temptations." In some ways all of our circumstances are temptations. We are tempted by ease to become indolent; we are tempted by tribulation to lose hope. We are tempted by riches to indulge the flesh; we are tempted by poverty to complain. Everything is a potential temptation. We are surrounded by temptation the whole day long, like a snarling circle of hungry hyenas. But for the saving and sustaining grace of God we should all fall irrevocably and irretrievably into the abyss. But, in His grace, God has given us His Word and His Spirit, by which we are able to take unto ourselves the whole armour of God and having done all, to stand.

As an aside, two questions concerning Lot have always exercised me. One is to wonder how Lot was characterized as "righteous" when he chose to live in Sodom, offered his daughters to sexual perverts and got so drunk he slept with them both. The other question is to wonder why, being vexed in his righteous soul day after day, he never got out of Dodge and raised his family in a better place.

Doctrinally, I suppose, the concept of righteousness - or of being one of the just - is not necessarily experiential. Righteousness is imputed to God’s children through faith. The righteousness of God is attributed to them, though not necessarily exhibited in them in plain and undisturbed array. There must be evidence of regeneration in some form - but no one is born fully mature. So Lot, though he is found raising his family in a wicked city, and though he is vexed day and night by the surrounding corruptions, is still regarded as "righteous" - not because of what he does, but because of Who is in Him.

Then there is the concept of Lot being a "type" of Christ, the church and the saint. Christ came from glory to live in the Sodom of earth, and He is raising His family here right now. They are in the world but not of it, just as Lot was in Sodom, but not of it. God does sometimes call his saints to walk amidst the most appalling corruptions as a witness to His power, while they remain untouched by them. But it had better be Christ doing the calling and empowering - and not the saint making a fleshly show of his morality.

Christ, after all, walked amidst the "lowest" of sinners, eating and drinking with them. He never sinned in so doing. He was perfectly submitted and perfectly attentive to the Father’s will at all times. Just as Lot walked among the Sodomites without being a partaker of their corruption so Jesus walked among we, the depraved. At least, one hopes that Lot lived a life separate from the corruptions of Sodom. The Bible says he was vexed in his righteous soul day after day. Do you think Jesus was, too? It was the lawlessness of Sodom that vexed Lot. The word "lawlessness" is identical to the word "sin". Can you begin to imagine the vexation of Christ, and His divine forbearance in walking among sinners?

But, just as we are shown in Lot, and promised through his example, that God knows how to deliver the godly from trial - so in Christ God knows how to deliver His Own from judgment and destruction. This world is Sodom. This world is stored up for destruction by fire. And when judgment comes the godly in Christ Jesus will have been removed by God. He came for that purpose - to seek and to save that which was lost. He "came" to Sodom to see if there were ten righteous so that He might spare the city for their sake. Yet so long as there was one of His righteous in Sodom God did not destroy it. Nevertheless, Lot escaped as if by fire, just ahead of the maelstrom. One day, God will remove all the righteous from the earth and then...

This also foreshadows or pictures salvation - as well as the second coming. God comes to the place of destruction to save those who are in the family of the one to whose seed the promise was made.