On the radio show this week we have a few stories about "intentionality". Does it matter if something is intentional or not? We're going to look for answers in the Bible because Jesus told us to "Remember Lot's Wife." This is a command from Jesus himself. Why? What's so special about her? Why do we have to remember her?
Good morning, welcome to the Morning Motivation brought to you by the Patriot Gold Group and the Public Square app. On my Sirius XM radio show, we're going to talk about the Kansas City Chiefs parade shooting. We haven't done that yet. I was out the last couple of days of last week. And how, of course, it was committed by three young black men, two are under 18 and one's 22. It was a personal dispute. So some gang related thing but that doesn't fit the narrative so this whole story will poof go away. Gang shootings like this happen all the time and they never make the news. Of
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course this one did it was much more dramatic 22 people were shot including 11 kids but shootings like this happen constantly. People just don't want to hear the truth about this. They don't want to get to the bottom of it, they don't want to solve it, it's hard. So instead they just come up with more government programs to do something that they think will make a difference, pat themselves on the back, and it never does make any real difference. The best secular answer to explain this is fathers. More fathers in the home are needed to help young men channel their anger and their energies
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and keep them away from bad people and situations, of course. That's the best secular answer. The real answer is Jesus. And the importance of giving every kid an identity beyond the street, an identity beyond what the world is telling them. Give them an identity beyond themselves. Life's not all about me and what people think about me. I'm living for something much bigger than anything that the world can offer me,
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and nothing can pull me from that. That's how we need to be raising our kids. But no one wants to hear that, of course. No, could you imagine? No one wants to hear that the solution to school shootings is Jesus. But of course, that's the answer. We're going to play this clip on Tuesday's radio show. It's of Roland Fryer. A bit of back story. Do you remember Claudine Gay? She was the president of Harvard who was since fired and now still has a $1 million a year job that they just made up for her to keep her at Harvard even though she's not the president
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anymore. But before she was the president, she was the dean of the College of Arts. And Roland Fryer was the greatest economist in the country. He's a superstar. He won all these awards, the Genius Grants, all this other stuff. Youngest black econ tenured professor at Harvard or maybe even anywhere, the guy's an absolute genius.
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All the accolades, all the firsts you could imagine. But then he did some research on black people and police shootings. And it was Claudine Gay who had him suspended from Harvard and his research center closed. He doesn't do a lot of interviews. He just did one the other day. And I just realized I can't play it because I am traveling right now and do not have my normal setup. So why don't I just tell you what Roland Fryer said and then on tomorrow's episode, if it's
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still important, I can play it for you. But his research found that yes, there was indeed some racial bias from police on low level interactions with people, but there was no racial bias at all with police and shooting black or white people. And he says all these elites and academics, they of course liked the first result, but they didn't like the second result. And they told him that he should not publish his findings. And so hold on, what if we found, what if the data found that there was a racial bias
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in police shootings, then would you want me to publish it? And they said, yes, of course. It just didn't fit the narrative. Now it was a hundred and eight page document with a hundred and fifteen pages of footnotes. He says as soon as he released the results it took about five minutes before people came back and said your results are blank. Swear word. He said, wow you're a fast reader. It's unbelievable how quickly you could criticize this research. I think he said he had 15 full-time research fellows doing the
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research for the study and he couldn't believe the results so he hired another 15 to go over the numbers once again and it was the same result indeed it was true. He said after releasing this he had to live under police protection for about a month, month and a half. He had a seven day old daughter at the time. And he went shopping for some diapers and he had to have an armed guard following. That's how crazy it was. That's how much people don't want to hear the truth. People don't want to hear the truth. And these elites maybe had good intentions, but it's so hard to admit you're wrong or maybe some people don't have good intentions. Either way it's the same end result. But it's those good intentions that we're going to talk
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about this week. We talked a bit about intentions last week on the radio show as well because we don't need to go over the details now but test scores are so bad that there's no way they're trying to educate kids and failing this bad. You can't fail this bad. You can't fail more than no kids in the school can read. You can't do worse than that. So I can only come to the conclusion that they're doing it on purpose. So intentionality became a thing that's come up lately. So I want to talk about intentions as it comes to the Bible. You've perhaps heard before that the shortest scripture, what's the shortest scripture? It's the
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shortest in English? Two words, nine letters? But in Greek it's 16 letters. It's actually 1 Thessalonians 5.16. Only 14 letters in Greek. That scripture says rejoice always. Either way, whatever technicality you want to throw, these are powerful lines because they're short. That's like John Wayne or something. Talk low, talk slow, don't say too much. Short staccato, powerful lines. Rejoice always.
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Can I give you one more? Oh, it's a little long. It's three words. Jesus said it. Remember Lot's wife. That's what Jesus told us to do. He said, Remember Lot's wife. Lot was a righteous man.
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It says in 2 Peter 2, Lot was a righteous man. He and his wife, they left Sodom when it was being destroyed. And she, Lot's wife, looked back towards the city against God's expressed command. And she was struck dead immediately turned into a pillar of salt and Jesus tells us today remember lots wife. He doesn't say remember Abraham. He doesn't say remember a lot He doesn't say remember Isaac or Jacob or Ruth or anyone
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He says remember lots wife quite a warning Especially when you consider who he first gave it to. He wasn't talking to the Pharisees. He didn't say, Pharisees, you better watch out or you're going to be like Lot's wife. He didn't say that. He said it to his disciples.
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Even to them, he thought it was a worthy word of caution. Remember Lot's wife. I'm going to take this insight here from the great J.C. Ryle. He made the point that Jesus doesn't say, do not be like Lot's wife, or beware of acting like Lot's wife. It was remember Lot's wife. J.C. Ryle said that Jesus speaks as if we are all in danger of forgetting the subject. The word remember, that command, is more active.
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You should constantly be thinking about Lot's wife and what happened to her.
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Remember her.
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So Jesus, of all the people He could tell us to remember, focuses on Lot's wife. And of all the people He could be telling this command to, it's His disciples. And of all the things about Lot's wife, He tells us to remember her actively, all the time. Remember her. Let's get to the story and then we'll break it down throughout the week here.
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Genesis 19. So, this is the scene where Lot takes in two angels and the men of the city start banging on Lot's doors because they want to rape the angels. And Lot offers up his daughters instead. That's another... We could spend another week on that one. And then the angels blind the men, but it doesn't stop them from trying they're so ravenous they're so full of lust they can't stop trying to get inside to rape these angels I'll
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pick up verse 12 then the men the angels said to Lot have you anyone else here sons-in-law sons daughters or anyone you have in the city bring them out of this place for we are about to destroy this place because the outcry against its people has become great before the Lord and the Lord has sent us to destroy it. So Lot went out and said to his son's-in-law, who were to marry his daughters, Up, get out of this place, for the Lord is about to destroy the city. But he seemed to his son-in-laws to be jesting. They didn't listen.
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As morning dawned, the angels urged Lot, saying, Up, take your wife and two daughters who are here, lest you be swept away in the punishment of the city. But he lingered. So the man, the angel, 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. And as they brought him out, one said, Escape for your life. Do not look back or stop anywhere in the valley. Skip ahead to verse 23.
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The sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zoar. Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven. And he overthrew those cities and all the valley and all the inhabitants of the cities and what grew on the ground. But Lot's wife behind him looked back and she became a pillar of salt. I love the beginning of verse 29 too. So it was. It's like that's what happened. It's in so and so it was.
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But Lot's wife looked back and she was struck down immediately. What in the world are we to do with that and what could we possibly learn from that? Well, there better be something, because Jesus told you, remember Lot's wife. On tomorrow's episode, we'll talk about who Lot's wife was and how we are a lot like her. Mike Slater dot locals dot com. The night Lot's wife was and how we are a lot like her. Mike Slater dot locals dot com. The night before transcript, commercial-free. Mike Slater dot locals dot com.
