Genesis 19:1-20:18
Its almost evening. Just about time for dinner.
Two angels (disguised as men) come to Sodom (a large town and city that is extremely evil… as we’ll see).
The nephew of Abraham (his name is Lot) who is sitting by the gate of the city, sees them and gets up to say hey…only to then get on his knees when he gets closer and bow down to them. He says “Lords!! Come stay at my house!” But they say to him “No we’ll stay outside thanks.” Lot insists sooooo much, however, that in the end they give in and go into his house. There he feeds them and serves them.
Before they can get to bed the men from the city – both young and old – come and stand around Lot’s house. They’re like an angry mob cos they want Lot to throw the travellers (the ones who are angels) that he has in his house out of his house so that the peeps in the mob might have SEX with them!
These guys were completely evil.
Lot wasn’t evil – few! He goes outside and closes the door behind him to stop any peeps from getting in through the open door. Then he speaks to the mob and says: “Hey! Look I have two daughters who are virgins… have them and do ANYTHING you want with them, but leave these men alone cause I’ve taken them in and cared for them.
His offer is an amazing one… he’d give up his daughters virginity to protect these strangers whom he has fed and looked after!!! At the same time it’s not a good thing to do either, but at the time there was no law. Men were ignorant of what God condemned.
The mob doesn’t have any of it though…I mean, the choice is clear to them: two young virgins or two men. Lol either Lot’s daughters were really ugly or the bible is showing us just how evil these guys are cos they choose the men!
But then things get cool. The angels start acting like really cool angels (remember that they look like men but actually they’re nine-foot tall giants of spiritual light that could kill a human with a touch)
They grab Lot and pull him back inside the house and lock the door just before the mob grab him. Then, before the mob know anything, the angels (maybe by making a quick prayer? Or maybe with their own powers) make every single person in the mob completely blind!
Then they say to Lot: “Look, Lot, we’re actually angels (Lot’s probably like: no kidding) and God has sent us here to destroy the WHOLE CITY because it’s so evil. But you’re good so you can take your family and run. Get all your family and leave!”
Lot runs outside and speaks to the two men who were going to become his daughters’ husbands (they must’ve been feeling pretty annoyed cos Lot had been about to give their future wives to be raped by a whole group of other guys). Anyway Lot says “the city is going to be destroyed – we’ve got to run!” but they don’t believe him; in fact they look at how big and great the city is and think that Lot is joking around with them. (Why would they think that about him unless he made a lot of jokes… if he never joked then they would have been more likely to believe him maybe?)
The angels look to the east and see that dawn is coming so they come to Lot and say “Right. You need to leave NOW. Take your wife and your daughters and run or you will be destroyed too.”
But Lot hesitates. We don’t know why. So the angels have to take charge AGAIN and they take Lot’s hand and lead him out of the city along with his wife and daughters. God was merciful to them: he let them live. Once they’re out of the city they say to Lot: “You’re out – now RUN! Run for your life and whatever you do you MUST NOT look back and you MUST NOT stop where it is flat, you have to keep running until you get to the mountains. You’ll be safe there.”
Lot looks at the mountains and his jaw drops open and he says “Woah!! Those mountains? Really? But that’s, like, all the way over there! There is no way we can run all the way there! Look there is a small town. Look – right there. Let me run to there, then you can keep me alive…?”
So He (God or the angels?? Bible doesn’t make it too clear) says “Alright I won’t destroy that town and I’ll wait until you’re safe before I destroy this city. So reach it quickly because I NEED to destroy this place.”
Lot and his family run to the town. They reach it and God makes rain of burning sulphur come down on Sodom and its neighbouring city of Gomorrah (which was just as evil). And the cities are completely trashed into nothing along with all the plants and vegetation and stuff.
Then Lot’s wife does a stupid thing. She disobeys the angels and she looks back… uh oh. Next thing Lot knows and the nice wife he’s been cuddling up to in bed each night is now a pillar of salt… bet he did a double take… :O Can you imagine him? “is that… is that SALT!?!?!” Maybe he took some and licked it. “Ergh. Yep. That’s salt. Er… what do we do now?” Well either they left her and when the next rain that wasn’t burning sulphur came it dissolved his poor wife OR he carried the pillar with him and sold it at the next market he came to… either way.
In the distance Abraham walks up a hill and looks over where Sodom and Gomorrah had been standing up until the day before. He just sees loads of dense smoke rising up from the land.
God remembers Abraham when he destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah and THEREFORE he rescued Lot… sounds like if it hadn’t been for Abraham Lot would possibly still have had his wife a bit longer, but he’d have been dying a lot sooner.
After this Lot is pretty scared about remaining in the town, considering how close IT came to also being destroyed. And so he moves to the mountains (presumably remembering that the angels had said he would be safe there) and he settles there with his two daughters. They live in a cave together. Probably fine with Lot: he’s had a wife. Not so fine with the daughters who’ve been robbed of their husbands (remember those silly idiots who had thought that Lot was joking about Sodom being destroyed). So the older daughter says to the younger “Hey, there’s no guy here but our dad and he’s old. If we don’t do something drastic then our family is going to die out… so you know the genius plan they come up with? Get their dad DRUNK then go and SLEEP with him… well works the first night. The older daughter has sex with her dad (he must’ve been pretty drunk). The next day the older sister is like “Right. I’ve had my go. Now it’s yours.” So they get him drunk again and the younger daughter goes sleeps with him. Not one of the nicest parts in the bible.
The babies they have are pretty cool though: one becomes the founder of the Moabites! (You’ll meet some Moabites in the rest of this story that is the bible) And the other bears a baby whose family becomes the Ammonites (other big people in the bible, usually enemies of Israel later on) So wow! Out of that small passage God allows the birth of two pretty MASSIVE nations… :O
Soon after that Abraham probably decides it’s a bit unsafe to remain around the land for much longer, or maybe there was so much smoke he got fed up of his clothes constantly stinking like smoke.(jk they probably had much worse smells than smoke in those days lol) But whatever the reason he moves on into a new land. And the King there meets with him. But Abraham becomes afraid that the King is evil. If the King was evil then he might kill Abraham and take Sarah as his own wife... though at this point she is ninety years old!!
So he tells the King that Sarah is his “sister”
Ah. Only problem then is that the King thinks: ahh! Brilliant! This ninety year old woman is unmarried! That means I can have her :D :D So that’s what he does… he takes Sarah.
Oh thank goodness that God intervenes eh? He sends the King a dream saying: “You are as good as dead because that woman you have there – she’s married.”
Now it was all God’s work but God had arranged that the King would not go near or even touch Sarah before he had been warned that she was married. This dream from God –where he’s told he’s like a walking dead man freaks the King out quite a lot (not surprising really) and so he says to God: “Not my fault. I mean the guy said that she was his sister! How was I supposed to know?”
Now we see that God is fair, because his reply is “I know. Why do you think you didn’t decide to sleep with her last night? I made you decide against it! That way you haven’t sinned against me. BUT – now you know, so give her back to Abraham cos he’s a prophet and he’ll pray for you and you will live. You can decide not to return her… but then you and your entire family will be killed. Your choice.”
Those are the really simple choices lol. The king gives Sarah back, and he’s probably sweating LOADS at this moment in time... He’s just been accosted and threatened by some invisible God he has never heard of before! For all he knows the God might suddenly decide to turn him into a pile of dust or something. So he gets Sarah back to Abraham, relaxes and then is like: “Why????”
Abraham is really manly here and says: “I was afraid you’d kill me… anyway, she is my sister – we’re just…. married as well…”
Well the King is probably like: “oh, fair enough, I probably WOULD have killed you (lol, I can laugh about it now.)” Then he says to Abraham “Well have lots and lots of money (in the shape of sheep and goats and such animals) Oh and you can live anywhere in my land that you want – no problem.” Then he says to Sarah “Er.. look, sorry bout the confusion, but I’ve paid your brother LOADS of money so everything’s sorted now.” Then Abraham prays for the King and suddenly all the women in the King’s family start popping out babies.. well I guess they didn’t start popping out. But they could suddenly have babies, it seems like they had become barren just as Sarah was because Sarah had been taken by the King.
Matthew 7:24-8:22
Jesus then said…
“Right, everyone who listens to these words AND does what they say to do is like a wise man who builds his house with planning permission. The solicitors and the lawyers came but they could find no way to get it knocked down. HOWEVER if you hear these words and DO NOT do what they say to do it’s like you’ve built a house without building permission. The solicitors and the lawyers come and that house is coming down just as soon as they can hire a wrecking ball or a demolition crew – right away.”
The crowd heard all of Jesus’ teachings and they were like “Wow. That’s pretty cool. He teaches like he actually knows what he’s talking about… not like those other people who try teaching us.”
Now Jesus had been talking on a mountain and when he came down the crowds followed him. Then a man with a disease that was incurable came up to him – the crowds parted pretty quickly. The man came and knelt before Jesus and says “You! You are Lord. If YOU are only willing to heal me then I can be healed!” …Jesus doesn’t even seem to flinch!! He reaches out to the man and TOUCHES him (oh, this is BEFORE he has healed the man.) Then he says “Yea, I’m willing. Be healed!” And immediately the crowd watch as the visible sign of the disease leave the man and he is completely healed. Jesus says to him “Don’t tell anyone. Just go and show yourself to one of the doctor/priests who can confirm that you are, in fact, healed. Then give a gift to God as the Law says that you should.
Jesus comes then to a town called Capernaum. A ROMAN >:( centurion comes to him and says. “Look, Jesus, my servant is lying at home. He can’t move at all and is in loads of pain.” Jesus looks at him in a way that says ‘what have we here?’ then he says “I’ll come and heal your servant for you.” But the centurion says “oh no! No, no. I’m a roman, you shouldn’t come into my house – we both know that’s not done. But just say the word and I KNOW my servant will be healed. For I command soldiers and they do exactly what I tell them to. It is similar to you. You have authority so when you tell sickness to leave – It WILL leave.
Jesus is looking at the man at this point with WONDER! He was actually astonished by this faith. He turned to his disciples and said “ You think that you in Israel – the chosen nation – have faith. This ROMAN who isn’t even a Jew has more faith than anyone in Israel. Is everyone listening? Good hear this: people are gonna come from the east and the west. They will feast with your ancestors (the ones whom you DREAM of eating with in heaven) and they will eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of Heaven. But people from the kingdom will be thrown out into the darkness where there will be hell! Then Jesus turned to the centurion and said “Go. It will be done as you believed it would.” The servant was healed that very hour.
They travelled to Peter’s house. Jesus entered and saw Peter’s mother-in-law (yes, Peter had a wife and probably kids.) She was in bed with a fever. Ooooo. Not good. But no problem for Jesus – he touched her hand and she got up and gets them a meal! That’s dedication!
Then in Jesus’ evening the people brought lots of demon-possessed people and he drove out the spirits with a word and he healed ALL the sick. And all this fulfil a prophesy about the messiah which says “He took up our infirmities and carried our diseases.”
Jesus attracted crowds and he saw this so he gave orders to cross to the other side of the lake. Then one of the teachers of Law (like a pastor) came up to Jesus and said “Teacher! I will go WHEREVER you go!”
Jesus looked at him and replied: “foxes live in holes. Birds have nests. But me, the Son of Man, has nowhere to lay his head. In effect: I’m homeless.”
Another disciple called out “Lord. Let me just go bury my father first. But Jesus said “Follow me and let the dead bury their own dead!” Basically: “We both know that we still actually need to wait for your father to die before you can bury him. Come with me and have life: let those who are spiritually dead bury their own dead.”
Psalm 7:1-9
God my refuge is You
You protect me, yes you do
They would try and bomb me
To tear me into pieces – see?
God, if this is me
If my hands are guilty
If I’ve hurt my friends
Aimed for my own ends
Then let bully’s beat me
And get away scott free
So I want to pay death’s fee
Get up and rage God!
And break the bully’s rod!
Awake and even all!
Gather everyone to your hall,
And then to be their King!
Judge them of their sin!
But Judge me of my goodness,
And of my holiness,
O, righteous Lord,
Who knows the minds and hearts of frauds:
Bring an end to this fight –
Make all things right.
No comments:
Post a Comment