LESSONS FROM LOT

Chapter 19 of Genesis has to be one of the most tragic chapters in the entire Bible. It tells the story of the grievous fall of Lot. It is horrendous. It is terrifying. It is sickening. And it is a story we should pay very careful attention to because it is a story of warning. It warns us about what can happen to people who make friends with the world.

As long as Lot was with Abram he prospered. Abram was the friend of God. He was salt and light in Lot’s life. But when Lot separated from Abram and chose to move into the plain of the Jordan; when he chose to move close to Sodom; when he chose to move into Sodom and become friends with the astonishingly wicked men of that city he was courting his own destruction.

In 19:1 we are told that Lot was sitting in the gateway of the city of Sodom. Had he become one of the elders of the city? Had he risen to a position of prominence among the Sodomites? Did his leadership make any difference in the morals of the men of Sodom?

Lot took the men (angels) into his home for their own protection but he couldn’t even protect them there. All the men of the city (19:4) came to Lot’s house that night to sexually assault the visitors. Lot went outside to confront the men and he addressed them as his “friends.” He exchanged his companionship with Abram for friendship with these perverted men. And in an effort to placate his “friends,” Lot offered his virgin daughters to them to assault. Who can understand this?

When the angels warned Lot to leave the city because the LORD had sent them to destroy it (19:13), Lot went to warn his sons-in-law to escape and save their lives. What did these young men do? They laughed at Lot! They thought he was joking! (19:14) Lot did not even have a good enough reputation with his sons-in-law to influence them!

When it was time to leave Sodom, Lot hesitated. (19:16) The angels had to seize him by the hand and lead him out. (At this point I pause and thank God for doing the same thing with me! He demonstrated grace toward me and pulled me out of the gutters of sin!) And still Lot has the audacity to plead with the angels to allow him to flee to Zoar instead of the mountains! (19:20)

And finally, Lot drunkenly impregnates his two daughters when they conspire to carry on their family line in the absence of marriageable men. The text carefully says that Lot was so drunk that he didn’t know when they lay down nor when they got up.

A sobering account. How far into sin Lot fell! And what an example of God’s grace! Let us not forget what Peter writes about Lot! “And if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the filthy lives of lawless men (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)—if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue godly men from trials and to hold the unrighteous for the day of judgment…” (2 Peter 2:7-9)

Is Lot’s deliverance really all that different from my own?