Are You Righteous?

If your life were recorded in Scripture—your actions, thoughts, motives, words—would you be considered one of the righteous? Are you righteous? What’s the standard?

Lot is nobody’s favorite character in Scripture. Yet Peter holds him up as an example of righteousness. Why?

The answer cuts to the heart of what it means to walk with God.

What Does 2 Peter 2:5-9 Mean?

2 Peter 2:5 if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others; 6 if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to annihilation by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; 7 and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the filthy lives of lawless men 8 (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)—9 if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue godly men from trials and to hold the unrighteous for the day of judgment, while continuing their punishment.

Peter ended verse 4 with the claim that the false teachers will be condemned. The purpose of verses 5-9 is to support that statement by showing that condemnation is consistent with what God has done in the past. God set angels to hell despite their high status, destroyed the world of Noah’s time despite the large number, and annihilated Sodom and Gomorrah with an inescapable, fiery cataclysm. Given all that, he certainly won’t spare the false teachers.

But there is an escape for the righteous (defined by having in God, not by a clean track record or certain amount of victory). Our response should be to rebuke wickedness and maintain a love for holiness that brings us to great distress over evil.

 

2 Peter 2:3 … Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction has not been sleeping. 4 For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them into pits of darkness to be held for judgment; 5 if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others; 6 if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to annihilation by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; 7 and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the filthy lives of lawless men 8 (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)—9 if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for the day of judgment, while continuing their punishment.

 

Introduction: Is God Angry or Merciful?

Last time I mentioned the guy who posted on my Q&A page that comment about how the God of Noah’s flood and Sodom and Gomorrah is angry and condemning. Is that true? It’s a half truth. Less than half. Obviously, God was angry. But if you think the God of Genesis 6 and 18 is only angry and condemning, how do you explain Noah and Lot?

2 Peter 2:5 … if he protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others … 7 and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man … 9 if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials

This text is a beautiful, refreshing oasis of mercy in a vast wilderness of judgment and condemnation in the rest of the chapter. Every word in 2 Peter 2 is about condemnation, except these words here about salvation. Peter’s logic is this: If God rescued Noah from the flood judgment and Lot from the fire judgment, but he condemned everyone else, that tells us two things:

2 Peter 2:9 [if all this is true] then the Lord knows how to (#1) rescue the godly from trials and (#2) to hold the unrighteous for the day of judgment, while continuing their punishment.

God knows how to do both, and we looked at the judgment part last time. But Peter doesn’t want us to miss the salvation part.

When that Facebook guy said, “The God of Genesis is a wrathful God but I believe in a loving God,” he acting like God can only have one characteristic. It has to either be wrath or love. That’s silly. Nobody has only one characteristic. Certainly not God—he has hundreds of attributes.

And one of them is that there is a certain kind of person God will condemn and a certain kind he will rescue. Peter’s whole reason for writing this book is to make sure you and I are in that second group and not the first group. So let’s take a close look at what he says about Noah and Lot.

This statement in verse 9 has three parts, so we have a nice, simple outline. First he points us to the Rescuer, then he tells us who gets rescued, and then what we get rescued from.

God’s Judgment IQ

The one thing Peter tells us about the Rescuer (God) has to do with his knowledge.

2 Peter 2:9 … the Lord knows how to rescue the godly … and to hold the unrighteous for the day of judgment, while continuing their punishment.

He knows how. Instead of talking about God’s power to save and to judge, Peter points specifically to his knowledge. He wants us to see the intelligence involved.

Where People Doubt God’s Wisdom the Most

We talk about intelligent design in the creation; there’s also intelligent design in Judgment Day. That’s important because isn’t the doctrine of hell and judgment day and who goes to heaven and who doesn’t—isn’t that the one of the areas where people most often doubt God’s intelligence?  “God shouldn’t send these people to hell. It’s not fair if those people get judged. The punishment is too much. Salvation is too narrow.” They’re doubting God’s wisdom. They’re saying he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

And so Peter has to state the obvious. “God knows how to save and judge. The God of infinite wisdom and omniscience actually knows what he’s doing when it comes to condemning and saving. You don’t have to second-guess him or supervise his wrath.”

Precision in Judgment

Think of what a precision operation it was when God rescued Noah and Lot. The US military prides itself on its ability to carry out targeted strikes in military operations. They even have drones that can kill a specific person in a particular seat of a moving vehicle and leave the rest of the passengers of the vehicle untouched. Very precise targeted strikes.

But they still have some collateral damage. We’re not to the point where we get it 100%. But God is. He knows how to do targeted strikes with his wrath with 100% accuracy and zero collateral damage.

Judgment Day will be incredibly precise. It’s not karma, it’s not just a general principle of what goes around comes around, it’s not just some vague process of fairness that’s sort of baked in to the creation. Judgement and salvation are direct actions of an all-knowing, wise God who knows every heart, every deed, every bit of context, who sees every heart, who has a perfect understanding of right and wrong, and perfect knowledge of exactly what each person deserves.

That’s what Peter wants you to know about the Rescuer. The second point is who gets rescued.

Who Gets Rescued: The Godly/Righteous

2 Peter 2:9 the Lord knows how to rescue the godly

And who gets judged? The ungodly.

2 Peter 2:5 he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people … 6 if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah … and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly

Who gets rescued? The godly. Who gets judged? The ungodly. That’s one way to say it. The other way Peter describes the same two groups is the righteous and the unrighteous.

2 Peter 2:5 … God protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness … 7 and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man

So it’s the righteous who were saved. And who gets judged?

2 Peter 2:9 … the Lord knows how … to hold the unrighteous for the day of judgment

The godly, righteous people will be saved, the ungodly, unrighteous people  will be judged, and those are the only two categories of human beings that exist.

Now that raises the obvious question: Which group are you in?  And how could you know for sure?

What Does “Godly” Mean?

Godliness is a fairly simple concept. An ungodly person is someone who acts as though God doesn’t exist. He may claim to believe God exists, but in day to day life he just ignores him. The godly are the opposite—they live to honor God, obey God, give thanks to God, walk with God—their decisions in life take God into consideration.  That’s godliness.

What Does “Righteous” Mean?

How about the other term—righteous? This is the one Peter emphasizes most in describing Noah and Lot which shows Peter was a careful exegete of the book of Genesis. If you look up the word “righteous” in the Bible, guess where you find the very first occurrence?

Genesis 6:9 This is the account of Noah. Noah was a righteous man

That’s the first time we see the word righteous in the Bible and it’s the first thing that is said about Noah. The second time the word appears, it’s also about Noah.

Genesis 7:1 The Lord then said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation.

The reason Noah was saved from the flood was because of his righteousness.

Where do you suppose the third time we see that word is? The third, and the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth times the word righteous appears are in guess what story? The account of Lot and Sodom and Gomorrah.[1] When the Holy Spirit inspired the book of Genesis, he really wanted to make sure we associated word righteous with Noah and Lot. And Peter picked up on that even though he didn’t have Bible software, which is remarkable.  

But there’s a ton of confusion on this topic of righteousness, so we need to dig into this a bit. The Hebrew word literally means straight, as opposed to being crooked or twisted in your relationship with God. You’re righteous in a relationship when you are what you ought to be to another person or fulfilling your obligations in the relationship. When someone says to his friend or spouse after a conflict, “Are we good?” “Yeah, we’re good.” That’s pretty close to what this word means. You are a righteous person when you are right with God. you’re fulfilling the obligations of the relationship, and so God says to you, “Yeah, we’re good.”

Lot Was Righteous? Seriously?

So, does that describe Lot? I mean, he chose to live in Sodom, he offered to turn his virgin daughters over to a maniacal mob, he got drunk and ended up impregnating both his daughters. And that’s about all we know of his actions. Does that sound like a righteous man to you? And what are we to make of people who seem far better than Lot who are not considered righteous?  

I think every commentary I read and most of the sermons I listened to on this passage , all had a paragraph or two about how unrighteous Lot was. One of them just straight up said, “Lot was not a righteous man.”[2]

The only problem with that is Peter says:

2 Peter 2:7 he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the filthy lives of lawless men 8 (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)

Righteous man … righteous man … righteous soul. If God says it once, it’s true. If he says it three times in two verses, he’s making a point.

So how do we square that with the fact that Lot did bad things? I’ve heard evangelical preachers and theologians say, “Well, in the Old Testament, a righteous person is someone who does mostly righteous things.” What does that mean?  51%?  Could people in Old Testament times be right with God by doing mostly godly things and only stumbling once in a while? No.

Psalm 143:2 … no one living is righteous before you.

No one lives well enough to be right with God.

So how do we explain sinful people being called righteous? And how do you become righteous? And can we answer that without skipping ahead to the New Testament—just sticking with what we have in the book of Genesis—before we get to the story of Lot?

How to Become Righteous

Yes, we can. We already got one clue in Genesis 6:9, when it says Noah was righteous and then explains that by saying he walked with God. So we know it has something to do with your daily interactions with God—a certain kind of relationship with God.

What kind, exactly?  The answer to that is sandwiched right in between the accounts of Noah and Lot. The story of Lot is in Genesis 18, and the definitive passage in the whole Bible on how a person becomes righteous before God just happens to be in Genesis 15.[3] And by “definitive” I mean every time you see someone called righteous in the Bible, it’s based on the Gensis 15 model.[4] So when the original readers of Genesis saw that Lot was one of the righteous, they would say, “Oh, I know exactly what that means because I just got done reading Genesis 15.”

The Definitive Passage on Righteousness

So what happened in Genesis 15? This is the first time in the Bible we see the noun form—righteousness.

Genesis 15:6 Abram believed in the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.

Every part of that sentence is important. Especially the word in.[5] It’s not just that God said something and Abram believed it was true. The Hebrew phrase “believe in,” means to put your trust in the person. It should be translated—Abram trusted in the Lord.

And if you trace that phrase through the Old Testament (to trust in), you find that it involves making a commitment to the one you’re trusting. You commit yourself to a relationship of trust.

It’s not about a single moment of trust, where you just pray a prayer one day. It’s an ongoing relationship of trust.

Habakkuk 2:4 the righteous will live by his faith

Being righteous before God happens when you are committed to living your life in a trust-based relationship with God.

Like Marriage

Does that mean a righteous person is perfectly committed to God?  No. There’s a difference between being fully devoted and being perfectly devoted. And if you wonder what I mean by that, just consider the relationship God created to illustrate our relationship with him—marriage.  No couple has ever been perfectly committed to each other. But when you get married, do you make a total life commitment? Yes. It’s the most comprehensive, total life commitment you can make in this world, which is why people get cold feet before a wedding. Total commitment, but not perfect commitment.

Credited to Your Account

So Abram committed himself to an ongoing relationship of trust in God, and how does God respond?

Genesis 15:6 Abram trusted in the Lord, and he (the Lord) credited it to him as righteousness.

The word credit means to chalk it up to his account. It has to do with Abram’s status in God’s sight. God said, “Because of that response of trust, from here on out, your status before me is that you are considered righteous. Even though no one on earth can be righteous on his own, because you committed to trust in me, I’ll chalk that up as if you were completely fulfilling the requirements of our relationship, so we’re good.”

Why Your Sins Don’t Count

But what about when we fall into sin? If you trust in God, your sins are not credited to your account.

Psalm 32:2 Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord does not credit (same word—chalk up) against him.^[6]

How could Lot be called righteous even though he did bad things? Because when you are one of the righteous because of a relationship of trust in God, your sins don’t get chalked up to your account. Only righteousness gets put down in the ledger. So you have righteous status in God’s eyes that applies 24/7 all day every day even in moments when you’re sinning. And that’s true regardless of what kind of sin you might commit.

How This Affects Behavior

Now, does that mean it doesn’t matter how you live? If you trust God, can you just do whatever you want? Asking that question is like saying, “If I totally trust this guide, can I go the opposite direction from where he leads?” If you’re asking that question, obviously you don’t trust the guide. If you trust God when he says his way is best, then each time you veer off the path, you’ll turn around and get back on. That’s called repentance, and it’s what you do when you trust God.

The Heart of Righteousness: Distress

So trusting God most definitely affects the way you live. But how? What does a righteous life look like?

Peter tells us, but it’s interesting—when Peter describes Lot’s righteous life, you might expect him to list a bunch of godly deeds. But Peter doesn’t mention any deeds. I’m sure Lot did a lot of really good deeds as a result of his faith. But when Peter wants to get to the heart of it, instead of describing anything Lot did, he talks only about how Lot felt.

2 Peter 2:7 he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the filthy lives of lawless men 8 (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, tormented his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)

When Lot looked around, he felt distress and inner torment. Those are emotions. The clearest sign of being righteous, righteous, righteous—the most profound impact that has on your life is godly emotions.

Emotions Reveal Righteousness

Your feelings will lie to you. They’ll lie about God, about right and wrong, about all kinds of things. But one thing they do tell the truth about your own heart. Your emotions reveal what you love and don’t love.

If someone blasphemes God and it doesn’t bother me, but then you put a scratch in my car and I fly off the handle, guess what I love? Your emotions reveal what your heart truly values.[7] You can say, “I’m pro-life, anti-gay marriage, I oppose transgenderism.”  “I’m pro-this and anti-that.” You can say stuff like that all day long, but the real proof is in what stirs you up inside.

So when Peter wants to prove Lot’s righteousness, he doesn’t talk about Lot helping old ladies across the street or giving to the poor or helping his neighbor plow his field. All of those could be skin-deep righteousness. Peter wants to show a genuine righteousness that goes all the way to the bone. It was so fundamental to who Lot was that it showed up in his emotions.

Why Only God Can Judge Righteousness

This is why you can and should judge actions and doctrine, but only God can judge someone’s overall godliness, because only God can see how the person feels and what he loves.[8]

This is why the commentators fail when they try to judge Lot. They catch him on his worst day and make that define his life.[9] If someone took your worst moment of your spiritual life and recorded that in the Bible and nothing else about your life, would people struggle to believe you’re a righteous person?

Are you a righteous person? The answer to that question has nothing to do with your worst moments … or your best moments … or your average moments. It’s not about

• how often you fail or
• ‘how often you do well or
• what you do most of the time or
• what percentage of the day you spend doing good or
• how shameful your worst sins were.

So if it’s not that, what is the evidence of a righteous life?

Loving good and hating evil and being distressed at the filthy lives of lawless men.

Lawless men are people who ignore God’s law or treat it with contempt. And if you’re righteous, that will really bother you when you see it.

How Lot Stayed Spiritually Sensitive

Now, is that something you have control over? Do you have the power to make something bother you more than it already does? The answer is in verse 8. Do you see where it says Lot was tormented in his soul? The literal translation is that Lot actively tormented his own soul. All that distress and angst and torment that Lot felt about the lawlessness around him—Lot took steps to activate and cultivate those feelings.

Cultivating Moral Perception

What steps? Again, the answer is in v.8. It had to do with seeing and hearing. In the Greek, the words seeing and hearing are out of the normal word order, which is the Greek way of underlining them three times. Literally it’s “In seeing and in hearing lawless deeds, that righteous one … tormented his righteous soul.” In seeing and in hearing lawless deeds. This is moral perception. Moral perception is your ability to perceive right and wrong.

Most people walk through life judging everything they see based on how much they like it or dislike it. That sunset is beautiful. This food is too salty. I like that guy. Moral perception is when you evaluate things based on good and evil. Instead of asking, “How much do I like or dislike this thing?” you ask yourself, “How much does God like or dislike this thing?”

And the more you contemplate God’s attitudes about that thing, if you love God, the more that will affect your attitudes. And attitudes drive emotions. You can nurture and feed godly emotions or ungodly emotions through moral perception.

Lot did that to the point of tormenting[10]  himself. And it’s in the imperfect tense which describes ongoing, continuous action. Lot was a tortured soul, and he saw to it that he stayed that way. And that’s why Peter says he was righteous, righteous, righteous.

What happens if you don’t do that? If you don’t use moral perception to proactively train your soul to keep on hating evil, you’ll just acclimate to it and become desensitized. The things you were shocked and outraged at ten years ago, now you’re so used to seeing and hearing them that you hardly notice them. Without a proactive effort, you’ll lose moral sensitivity.

Three Ways Distress Can Go Bad

Now, for some of you, the more I’ve talked, the more red flags might be popping up because you know people who are highly distressed about the evil in our society, and it’s not healthy. They’re always angry or afraid or hostile and they just don’t seem to have any joy.

Maybe you’ve struggled with some of that yourself. You watch the news, and you come away so upset—you know it’s not healthy. So what’s the difference between that and this good kind of distress that Lot had?

Well, the bad kind of distress usually takes one of three forms: fretting, fighting, or fear.  And Peter’s going to help us with each one of those.

1)   Guardrail for Fretting: The Rescuer

When you see a person who is always agitated and upset about the evil in our world, that person has fallen into the first pitfall—what the Bible calls fretting.[11] Fretting is when your distress over evil men takes away your joy and peace. You think, “The bad guys are winning, they won’t be punished, the people they hurt won’t be made whole—there won’t be justice.”

So what guardrail will protect you from that? It’s point #1—our rescuer’s judgment IQ.

2 Peter 2:9 the Lord knows how … to hold the unrighteous for the day of judgment, while continuing their punishment.

You think those evil people are getting away with it? God has them in custody.  They’re awaiting trial and they won’t escape. They’ll get what they deserve and the godly will be made whole. If your distress over evil takes away your joy or peace, you probably have the volume of the news turned up higher than the volume of God’s promises. And when we do that, we forget point #1—smart mercy. Intelligent design. God is smart enough to bring about justice. You don’t have to fret.

2)   Guardrail for Fighting: Remembering Your Rescue

Nor do you need to become hostile toward evil people—arguing, mocking them, insulting them. If you do that, you’re forgetting point #2—who got rescued (namely, you). The only difference between you and the person you’re mocking is that you were rescued, which means apart from God’s mercy, you would be right there with that person you’re mocking. Hostile, angry Christians have forgotten that. If you and another guy are both drowning in the middle of the ocean, and a rescue boat comes and saves you, what should your attitude be toward that other guy who’s still flailing in the water? Superiority?  No. You’ll want to hold out your hand to that guy and say, “Hey, join me here in the boat.”

Should you be bold and tell the guy the truth about his predicament?  Yes. And be clear about it. But you don’t have to be obnoxious about it.

Look at Lot’s example. Did he get in their faces and insult them (“Get out of here you twisted perverts!”)? No. What did he say?

Genesis 19:7 No, my friends, do not do this wicked thing.

My friends? (Literally, “my brothers”)? Would you say that if a mob was attacking you? Lot was remarkably kind and gracious, but he was also clear in calling their wickedness what it was. He wasn’t unnecessarily rude, but he didn’t sugar coat anything either. He spoke the truth in love.

Your Righteousness Will Anger the World

And if you do that, will you win a lot of friends? No. He calls them “My brothers,” and they respond by saying, “We’ll treat you worse than them.”

If you keep your moral sensitivity, and you really are distressed about perversion, don’t expect to be popular in this culture no matter how gracious you are. Charlie Kirk was gracious and compassionate and listened and treated people with respect. But he still called a spade a spade, and so they murdered him and celebrated his death. The same thing happened to Jesus.

Why? Because the ungodly are never satisfied with anything short of full approval of their sin. Not just acceptance of them as people, but specifically approval and even celebration of their sin. That’s why they stopped saying their marches are about rights and now they admit it’s about pride. Why do they have to march for pride? Is someone restricting their ability to feel pride? No. They want us to emotionally embrace and approve of their lifestyle.

The Condemning Effect of Loving Righteousness

Why? If they can take pride in their lifestyle, why can’t we take pride in ours? Because it makes them feel condemned. Right when the crazed, frenzied, angry mob was just about to smash Lot’s door in, look what happened:

Genesis 19:7 Lot said, “No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing.” … 9 they said, “This fellow … wants to play the judge! We’ll treat you worse than them.”

Isn’t that interesting? Their main complaint wasn’t that Lot was keeping them from doing what they wanted. It was that he made them feel judged. It’s almost comical if you think about it. Right in the middle of their wild, animalistic mob violence, Lot says one thing about their sin and they stop in their tracks and say, “Hey, you’re being judgmental.” If that doesn’t remind you of our culture I don’t know what will.

Noah’s righteousness had the same effect—it made people feel condemned.

Hebrews 11:7 … By his faith Noah condemned the world

Look what Peter calls him.

2 Peter 2:5 … he protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness[12]

Just like Lot—Noah wasn’t afraid to speak up. If you are truly distressed over the evil in our culture, at some point, you’ll confront it. The world will put all kinds of pressure on you to keep silent. They’ll accuse you of being judgmental or label you with some kind of phobia, or call you racist or extremist or a hater —whatever derogatory name they can come up with to manipulate you and control your speech. Don’t be intimidated by that. Don’t be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

3)   Guardrail for Fear: The Promise of Rescue

So the first pitfall is fretting. The second is fighting. The third is fear. There are some Christians who watch the news and they aren’t angry—they’re just overwhelmed.  The wickedness and depravity of our culture feels like a tsunami that’s crashing over them. And if you ask them what it is, exactly, they are afraid of, they may not even be able to put their finger on it.  They just feel vulnerable and helpless against this world of evil.

The guardrail for fretting is point #1—Our Rescuer’s knowledge. The guardrail for fighting is point #2—understanding that you were rescued. What’s the guardrail for fear?  You guessed it—point #3: what we get rescued from.

What We Get Rescued From

2 Peter 2:6 he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes … 7 and he rescued Lot.

So Lot was rescued from the fiery judgment. What about Noah?

2 Peter 2:5 … [The Lord] brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah

So Noah was protected from the flood judgment.  Both were rescued from judgment, so that’s what you expect Peter to say in his conclusion in v.9. But instead, listen to what he says:

2 Peter 2:9 if this is true (about Noah and Lot) then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from … trials.

Trials? Where did that come from? How does God’s rescue of Noah and Lot teach us that God knows how to rescue the godly from trials?

Trials Are Tests

Let’s start by defining trials. This Greek word refers to hardships in life that are also tests. Every time you experience something hard, unpleasant, painful, something you’d rather not experience—that’s a trial. Everything hard is a trial. And all trials are tests.

James 1:2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials (same word) of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.

Trials and the testing of your faith are interchangeable.  

It’s also the normal Greek word for temptation, which makes sense, because there’s always a temptation to respond in a sinful way when you face a hardship.

So what does it mean when Peter says the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials? Does that mean you won’t experience any trials? No. Noah and Lot both lost their home—Lot lost everything including his wife. They weren’t exempted from trials, but they were rescued from them.

God Won’t Make the Furnace Too Hot

The only conclusion I can draw is that the promise to rescue the godly from trials means God will rescue us from ever facing a test we can’t pass. You’ll be tested, but never beyond your ability.

1 Corinthians 10:13 No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tested (same word translated “trials”) beyond what you can bear. But when you are tested, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.

Noah and Lot both suffered, but not in ways that overcame their faith so that they would be included in the judgment. And we have that same promise for the final judgment, because there will be very severe trials leading up to that.

Revelation 3:10 … I will also guard you from the hour of trial (same word as our passage) that is going to come upon the whole world to test those who live on the earth.

Everyone gets tested leading up to the final judgment, but the godly have God’s protection so they can pass the tests.

This is a very important promise to understand because tests and temptations often feel impossible. One thing the elite athletes learn is that when you come to the point where you’re sure you’ve exhausted 100% of your strength, there’s still 20 or 30% more. It feels like you can’t take another step, but you can actually keep going quite a while longer. If you never learn that, you’ll never compete at that high level because you’ll quit too soon.

It works the same way spiritually. You will face trials that are so severe that it will feel impossible to endure. Impossible to resist a temptation, impossible to have a godly response, impossible to forgive someone, impossible to follow God’s path another day. That’s how it will feel, and if you have some idea in the back of your mind that maybe it is too much for you, that’s when you’ll cave in. So God promises to guard you and, before the furnace gets too hot, he’ll either dial it back or give you more strength.

What to Do about an Evil World

When you feel overwhelmed by the cataclysm of evil erupting in the world all around you, remind yourself—this isn’t a tidal wave that’s going to sweep me away.

It’s a targeted test of my faith for my good, engineered by God with intelligent design to fit inside the boundaries of what I can handle.

If you feel helpless to do anything about all the evil in the world, you’re not. If you’re just faithful to play your part in God’s overall plan by:

• loving his law,
• walking with God in a relationship of trust,
• hating evil, and
• speaking the truth—God will take that and use it to deal a massive blow to the kingdom of darkness.

Conclusion: Do You Trust God?

We’ve covered a lot tonight—probably way more than should be in one sermon, so if you’re brain is on overload, let me just give you one thing to take with you that’s very basic and it’s the most important thing I’ve said tonight. When you’re wondering how you’re doing or where you stand with God, don’t ask:

• How many temptations have I resisted?
• How many good things have I done?
• How bad was my worst moment?
• How good was my best moment?

All you ever need to ask this one question that covers everything.

Just four words: Do I trust God?

Summary

Peter’s summary in v.9 speaks of:

• The Rescuer (God’s judgment and salvation have intelligent design—we can trust him with it)
• Who gets rescued (the godly/righteous). Righteous means right with God, and it happens through committing yourself to a lifelong relationship with God based on trust. That will result in distress over evil, like Lot had. But that distress shouldn’t become fretting, fighting, or fear.

What we are rescued from (trials—we will never be tested beyond our ability so that it destroys our faith ending in judgment).

[1] God tells Abraham, “I’m going to destroy Sodom,” and Abraham says, “Wait, what about the righteous in the city?”

Genesis 18:23 … Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? God assures Abraham that he will not destroy the righteous in the city. And when the time comes, God rescues Lot. Clearly, the point is that Lot was the only righteous person in the city.

     The word “righteous” appears seven times in that conversation. The number seven is never an accident in ancient Jewish writing. We’re definitely supposed to notice the word righteous in this account.

[2] I think I understand why preachers are so quick to say Lot was unrighteous, at least in some cases. He treated his daughters poorly, and in our culture, you can’t ever be seen as sympathizing with anyone who mistreats women. So they have to maintain their credibility as good men in the eyes of our culture. But if God says someone is righteous, righteous, righteous, and we look at it and see it differently, God doesn’t need our critique. We just need to adjust our perspective to align with his.

[3] We’ve been talking about the adjective, “righteous.” Genesis 15 is the first time in the Bible we see the noun form—righteousness.

[4] Many of the commentaries say this righteousness of Noah and Lot can’t be imputed righteousness because that comes from Paul. But where did Paul get it? From Genesis 15.

Romans 4:3 What does the Scripture say? “Abraham trusted in God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” … 5 to the man who … trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness. 6 David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works: 7 “Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. 8 Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never credit against him.”

     Everything Paul taught about imputed righteousness came right out of Genesis 15 and Psalm 32. Imputed righteousness is not unique to the New Testament. The part that is new in the New Testament is that the righteousness that is imputed is Christ’s righteousness.

[5] The NIV leaves this word out, but that’s a mistake. It changes the meaning.

[6] This is the other primary passage Paul quotes (along with Genesis 15) in Romans 4 in his discussion of imputed righteousness.

[7] When Paul describes how evil people will be in the last days, it’s all about what they love and don’t love.

2 Timothy 3:2 People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive … 3 without love, unforgiving … not lovers of the good, 4 … lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.

     The truest measure of your righteousness or unrighteousness is what you love and don’t love. And the most accurate gauge of whether you love someone is how you feel when that person is attacked or disparaged.

[8] You and I can’t judge how righteous anyone is because there are people who seem to have squeaky clean lives from what you can see, but on the inside they really love some ugly things. There are people who, if you see them in their worst moments, do some terrible things. But if you could see how much they hate their own sin and how deeply they desire righteousness, you might find they are more righteous than you, even though you have never done the terrible things they’ve done.

[9] There are multiple possible explanations for how a righteous man could respond like Lot did. Maybe Lot knew those men so well that he already knew there’s no way they would be interested in his daughters and he was just showing the two angels how serious he was about protecting them. Or maybe he was out of his mind with fear and couldn’t think straight (imagine being attacked by an angry mob). Or maybe his values were so mucked up from living in that culture that he just had twisted priorities.

     It’s also important to understand that it’s possible for part of an action to be good and another part bad. The fact that he was willing to make a massive sacrifice in order to show hospitality and protect some strangers—that part is admirable. But being willing to put his daughters at risk was not.

[10] This is a strong word. It’s the same word the demons in Matthew 8 used when they asked Jesus, “Have you come here to torment us before the appointed time?” (Matthew 8:29).

[11] Psalm 37 is a long psalm warning us not to fret about evil people.

[12] Genesis doesn’t say that Noah preached, but it was considered common knowledge in Jesus’ day. It was in many of the Jewish bestsellers at the time—the classics from the intertestamental period. And it’s not hard to see how people would come to that conclusion. If you have a man as righteous as Noah, what’s he going to do—keep it to himself? He’s building a boat the size of a cruise ship for 120 years—obviously there’s going to be a conversation or two with his neighbors.

     The idea that Noah preached is especially prominent in the first book of the Sibylline Oracles, a product of Hellenistic Judaism, in which a long sermon of Noah’s is given (Sib. Or. 1:148–98). Normally Noah was said to have preached repentance to his wicked contemporaries (Sib. Or. 1:129: κήρυξεν μετάνοιαν, “he preached repentance”; Josephus, Ant. 1.74; Gen. Rab. 30:7: “one herald arose for me in the generation of the flood”; Eccl. Rab. 9:15; Pirqe R. El. 22; b. Sanh. 108; cf. also Theophilus, Ad Autol. 3.19; Methodius, Conviv. 10.3; Apoc. Paul 50: οὐκ ἐπαυσάμην … κήρυσσειν, Μετανοιεῖτε, “I did not cease to preach, Repent”; Book of Adam and Eve (ed(s). Malan) 3:2, 4; Noah’s preaching of repentance may also be implied in 1 Pet 3:20: ἀπειθήσασιν, “did not obey”).

 

[1] The reason Israel turned away from God was because of a memory problem. God warned them over and over—Don’t forget what it was like to be slaves, and don’t forget what I did to deliver you.” And what happened?Psalm 78:11 They forgot what he had done, the wonders he had shown them. They forgot everything God told them to remember. But they did remember one thing. Numbers 11:5 We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost– also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic. They forgot the misery of their bondage. But they remembered the food.

[2] From ch.7.