200301 Sermon on God's punishment for sin (Lent 1) March 1, 2020 Last Thursday the late night talk show host, Stephen Colbert, made a joke at God’s expense. He was riffing on the continued spread of the coronavirus. Then he went off stage, got a bell, started ringing it, and this is what he said: “Plague! Plague! A righteous cleansing to punish man for his lust and vanity! Oh, swing your scythe O angry God. Repent! Repent! Repent!” The audience laughed. Then he said, “Where was I?” and continued on with his monologue.Jesus says that in the last days it will be like it was at the time of Noah and like it was at the time of Sodom and Gomorrah. At the time of Noah the people only grew more wicked continually. The people were very busy. They were padding their pockets. I believe that they reached a very high level of sophistication in their civilization. But they didn’t care about the God who had spoken to Adam and his descendants through Seth all the way down to Noah. This God had said that judgment was coming over the face of the whole earth. He was going to utterly smash and destroy all that he had made. He essentially said what Colbert joked about: “A righteous cleaning is coming to punish man for his lust and vanity. I’m going to swing my scythe because I am angry. Therefore, repent!” When the people heard about Noah’s God they thought Noah was coo-coo for believing in him. I bet you that there were jokes made about Noah.At the time of Sodom, the rich people of that fertile plain had become so delicate in their tastes that natural relations were no longer enticing enough for them. They had to search out exotic, disturbing experiences in order to satisfy their sexual appetites. They gave up natural relations and burned with lust for the people of their own sex. This sexual perversion is what happens when cultures get rich and old and decadent. It happened at Sodom. It happened to the Greeks. It happened to the Romans. It happened to the British. It has happened to us. Not only is there this sin, which is bad enough, but what is much worse is that it will not be recognized as such. It is defended with such ferocity that those who will not go with the flow are denounced as deplorable. Those who are evil are regarded as good, and those who are good are regarded as evil. Without even trying, Stephen Colbert sums up perfectly our horrible spiritual condition as a people and a nation. What he says is so true that it is basically a textbook, catechism answer. God punishes man for his lust and vanity. He swings his angry scythe. We should repent. But then he laughs. The audience laughs. There evidently is wide appreciation for this joke, because the way that I found about it was by watching the morning news on Friday. They replayed it as a kind of cute little joke to raise your spirits. What happens when hearts become hardened is that people laugh at God’s threats and roll their eyes at God’s promises. They do not feel bad about how they regard God’s Word. It’s just a matter of course for them. If they feel bad about anything it might be that there are people like us who are so deluded as to believe that what God says in his Word is actually true. They hope that eventually we can be educated out of our medieval backwardness.To be a Christian these days it takes a bit of a backbone. If you want to be liked by everyone, then I don’t recommend that you remain a Christian. If you want to be regarded as smart by everyone, then I don’t recommend that you remain a Christian. You must put aside the desire to be praised by men and strive after being praised by God instead. Only those who regard God as their friend, their mighty fortress can even begin to live in such a way where they seek God’s approval instead of being approved by our peers.The Psalms in the Bible are instructive in this regard. The Psalmists are always praying to God and praising him as their defender, their rock, their strength, their hope. Very often the Psalmists speak to