THE TIPPING POINT

"Then out of the sky the Lord rained burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah from the Lord." (Genesis 19:24 HCSB)

Malcom Gladwell wrote a best-selling book called, "The Tipping Point." He draws the theme from the realm of physics and sociology where the word is used, as he frames it, "the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point." In terms of societal change, Gladwell wrote, "ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread like viruses do."

In the nineteenth chapter of Genesis, we see that Sodom had exceeded the tipping point. Evil had become an epidemic--a virus of vileness that cried out to the heavens for judgment. The disease, untreated, was terminal.

When a culture surrenders all pretense of decency and embraces deviancy as normalcy --even giving it celebrity--that society has reached the tipping point. Without timely and thorough repentance--a tipping point in turning to God from sin--judgment is inevitable. That was Sodom, where homosexuality had become synonymous with the city. This is the tipping point. Paul wrote,
For God's wrath is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth, since what can be known about God is evident among them, because God has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what He has made. As a result, people are without excuse. For though they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God or show gratitude. Instead, their thinking became nonsense, and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, birds, four-footed animals, and reptiles.
Therefore God delivered them over in the cravings of their hearts to sexual impurity, so that their bodies were degraded among themselves. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served something created instead of the Creator, who is praised forever. Amen.
This is why God delivered them over to degrading passions. For even their females exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. The males in the same way also left natural relations with females and were inflamed in their lust for one another. Males committed shameless acts with males and received in their own persons the appropriate penalty of their error.
And because they did not think it worthwhile to acknowledge God, God delivered them over to a worthless mind to do what is morally wrong. They are filled with all unrighteousness, evil, greed, and wickedness. They are full of envy, murder, quarrels, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, arrogant, proud, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, and unmerciful. Although they know full well God's just sentence-that those who practice such things deserve to die-they not only do them, but even applaud others who practice them. (Romans 1:18-32 HCSB)
Can we read this and deny that America is at the tipping point? We are marching toward the abyss. We are perhaps teetering on the brink.

That's the bad news--but, there is one golden shaft of sunlight that breaks though the clouds. Abraham interceded for Sodom. He prayed for God to spare the city for the sake of Lot and his family who dwelt there. God said that if in the perverse populace only ten righteous people might be present, He would withhold His wrath! This is the hope--the difference God's people can make--as they function as light in a dark world. It doesn't take many to make a difference. They must begin to lead the nation to the tipping point of spiritual awakening.

The problem in Sodom wasn't really the corrupt culture, so much as a carnal "Christian." Lot had miserably failed to lead even his own family to faith, much less influence the city for God. Will such nauseating lukewarmness be the mark of our generation of church members? Lukewarm is comfortable. We become like our environment--not disturbed about the conduct of the world and the world not disquieted about the claims of the church. Old Vance Havner said it this way, "Baptists are many, but not much."

We are at the tipping point.