“And if He rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked (for as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his should over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard)” (v7-8).
For all the great heroes who come to the rescue, none comes close to the greatest Hero of them all. God. Not Superman. Sorry Batman. Jack Bauer? No way. Peter lets us know in no uncertain terms that when the chips are down and clock is ticking, the Lord is at His best. He flips back to Genesis once again to remind us of the day God saved Lot’s bacon. The apostle wants his readers understand that no matter how dark the situation, God will come to the rescue. When the going gets tough, God gets going.
This is the fourth example Pete’s pulled from the Bible’s first book to assure first century believers that God has not left them swinging in the breeze. God dealt with the fallen angels (Gen 6:1-6; 2Pet 2:4). He flushed worldwide wickedness with the Great Flood (Gen 6:8-13; 2Pet 2:5). He rained down His hot wrath on the terrible twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen 19:23-28; 2Pet 2:6). Last but certainly not least, He came to Lot’s rescue just before the mushroom cloud rose (Gen 19:1-22, 29; 2Pet 2:7). Since He snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in these four situations, we can count on Him to do it again. Specifically, Pete’s recipients can take heart that God will handle this team of spiritual hucksters who have infiltrated His church (2Pet 2:1-3). God to the rescue!
The former fisherman reminds us once again that God is THE Hero of the story. In this case, “He rescued righteous Lot” (v7). He use the Greek verb (Gr. ruomai) that means to save or bring someone out of severe and acute danger. It literally means to pull toward oneself. The Lord reached down and yanked Lot out of danger just in the nick of time. And that’s exactly how it went down. In Genesis 19:1-25, Yahweh sends a pair of angels on a divine rescue mission to Sodom and Gomorrah. When Lot balks at leaving, these messengers “seized him and his wife and his two daughters by the hand, the LORD being merciful to him, and they brought him out and set him outside the city” (Gen 19:16). As the ultimate Hero, God comes to the rescue!
Pete describes our man Lot as a “righteous” dude. So just how righteous is Abraham’s nephew? Well, he was far from perfect. Lot offered up his own daughters to be raped when the exceedingly horny Sodomites pounded on his door and demanded he give them the two angels (Gen 19:4-8). And after God rescued him, this knucklehead let his daughters get him so wasted they could sleep with him (Gen 19:31-34). Not exactly the poster child of perfection. So just what made Lot righteous? Just like his uncle Abraham, “he believed in the LORD, and He counted it to him as righteousness” (Gen 15:4). Lot didn’t rely on his own goodness but the overwhelming goodness of God. Or as the Apostle Paul would write a few centuries later, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And it is not your own doing; it is the gift of God” (Eph 2:8). God gives us His sinless perfection when we trust in who He is and what He does. It’s what Luther calls the “Great Exchange” (2Cor 5:21). God didn’t rescue Lot because Lot was so wonderful. God rescued Lot because Lot trusted in God’s goodness.
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