|
"Lot and the
Barely Saved" Alexander Whyte says in his Bible Characters that if Abraham is the father of the faithful, Lot is "the father of all such as are scarcely saved." And Lot was scarcely or barely saved. Hesitating to the end, he was dragged out of Sodom by main force just before the Lord rained death upon the city, and did not even manage to get his immediate family safely away. Had not the angels come to Sodom and insisted on Lot's leaving with them, he and his entire family would have perished with his sons-in-law and all the others. And, even at the last minute, as much as he may have loved Sodom with a bad conscience, the grip of that evil world seems still strong on Lot's heart, now, outside the city, as he dickered with the angels moments before disaster struck and laid waste the cities of the plain. And all of that even though the men of Sodom had treated him as nothing and spoken so dismissively of him as an outsider just the evening before. Now Peter tells us (2 Peter 2:7) that Lot was a righteous man and that he was distressed by the filthy lives of the lawless men among whom he lived, but, fact is, he was not so distressed that he did not still feel the pull of that society and of that fellowship even to the very moment when God wiped it off the face of the earth. Lot had begun much better. He had come from Ur with Abraham, his Uncle, and Terah his Grandfather, as far as Haran and then on from Haran to Canaan with his Uncle when God made his covenant with Abraham. He had gone down to Egypt during the famine and like his Uncle he had prospered there. What is more, he had a first row seat when God rebuked Abraham for his lack of faith. When they returned to Canaan as two wealthy men, they found the land unable to support both of them in the same place, the size of their herds being what it was. So Abraham, perhaps because he knew the character of his nephew and had no intention himself of living near Sodom or perhaps simply out of a generous, unworldly spirit, gave Lot first pick of a place to settle, and Lot, seeing the fertile plain below, chose to settle near Sodom, outside the land of promise, wicked as that city already was. From that time on, while Lot no doubt continued to live the life of a prosperous man, things went less well for him. Invaders captured him and his family with the rest of the population of those cities of the plain and carted them off into captivity and were it not for Abraham coming to the rescue with his private army we would never have heard from Lot again. His daughters grew up and, predictably, married young men from Sodom, men who had no true and living faith in God and who chose, at the critical moment, to stay in Sodom and to laugh at the warning of the men who came from God. In other words, Lot made his own daughters widows by choosing to put them in a place where they would choose from among men all of whom were doomed to suffer the wrath of God. In the next part of Genesis 19 we will learn that Lot's daughters were not unaffected by their life in Sodom. They had been corrupted too and Lot and future generations would pay the price of that. Like Abraham, Lot had come to Canaan as a stranger and a pilgrim in this world, but, unlike his Uncle, along the way Lot had become more and more comfortable in the world, more and more a settler. When he chose to live among the cities of the plain he knew full well their reputation. He also knew that he was leaving the immediate influence of his Uncle, with whom God had made an everlasting covenant and upon whom God's favor rested. Had he just said to his Uncle what Ruth said to Naomi, "wherever you go I will go and wherever you lodge I will lodge," -- if he had simply said to himself that since God had made a covenant with Abraham, he would stay with Abraham, no matter what the cost to his flocks and herds -- he would never have brought himself and his family under the curse that befell them in the valley. But, the world was pulling him and he was inclined to be pulled. He came among the men of Sodom and, just as he had thought, they weren't as bad as had been reported to him, their life-style was simply misunderstood in some ways, and, what is more, very soon his cattle were up to their bellies in green grass in that fertile plain. Life couldn't have been better for him. And even when the kings from the north came and defeated the cities of the plain and carted off Lot and his family as captives -- Abraham's intervention seemed to Lot to confirm not that he had made a poor choice of a place to live, but that God had protected him and blessed him for settling there. After all, into every life a little rain must fall! And like the vast multitudes of folk who are Lot's spiritual descendants, as soon as his trial was over, as soon as the terror of spending the rest of his life as a captive slave and his family as well had passed, Lot returned to his old life and his old ways as if nothing had happened. You know yourselves how quickly you can forget the strain of a tribulation and what you were thinking and promising God under that strain when it has passed and your old life and your old habits beckon. And so we are left with this question: With all of those experiences behind him, with the wickedness of the people among whom he was living before him, with his Uncle's splendid example of manly and faithful living to consider, and with his own bad conscience concerning all of this -- which we learn from Moses here in Genesis 19 as well as from Peter --, why did Lot not leave Sodom and the life of compromise and spiritual declension that he and his family could not help but live while they lived there? And the answer is that Lot did not leave for exactly the same reason so many other Christian folk through the ages have not left, but have made their dangerous place among the worldly and have damned their children by doing so. It is as simple as this: he had too much invested in Sodom and to leave now would cost him too much. He had livestock and crops, he had a home near the city square, and he has prospered. What is more, he had been there long enough that his daughters had married into that society. Their in-laws were Sodomites from generations back. Their new families knew nothing of Abraham or God's covenant or the life of a pilgrim and the more his daughters settled into their new life with their new husbands the harder it was for Lot himself to remember such things. This had become his world, it was normal to him, and he couldn't imagine leaving it or that he should have to leave it. As Alexander Whyte perceptively describes the situation: "Lot is the father of all those men whose righteous souls are vexed with the life they are leading, but who keep on enduring the vexation." The number of men, Christian men and women, who will turn away from large profits and from the life of success and ease and from prospects for their children and willingly the suffer the loss of all of this simply to satisfy a troubled conscience is very, very small. It has always been a very small number, as it is today. Now, what we have in this account of Lot and his family is but one illustration of a reality that is addressed many times and in many ways in the Bible. Salvation is by grace and grace alone. Just what God may have to do to deliver us from the things that so endanger our souls no one can say. But, the Lord does know how to deliver the godly and he does whatever that deliverance requires, even if he has to burn up all that we possess and all that tempts us with fire and brimstone. For that is what Lot's salvation required -- the laying waste of an entire valley and five cities. Turning lush green grass into the most arid, most lifeless desert in the world. But, take note, brothers and sisters. This history is not recorded for us to encourage us, to hearten us, to console us with the knowledge that his angels are near to lay hold of us and draw us out of danger before it is too late. No one can read Genesis 19 and think that is the main point! For the affair is far too dishonorable and disgusting for that and the losses are too steep for that. When Paul says, in 1 Corinthians 3:10-15, that depending upon how well a man has built, his work will either survive or be destroyed on the day of judgment, when he says that a man who has built well will receive his reward, but that the man who has built poorly will suffer loss, he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames -- and Paul surely thought about Lot when he wrote those words -- he is not intending to console the man who builds poorly with the thought that he will himself still be saved. He is intending rather to warn that man, to solemnize that man, to frighten and worry and threaten that man, to awaken within him a sense of alarm. As Charles Hodge summarizes Paul's point in these verses: "He will just escape with his life, as a man is rescued from a burning building. His salvation will not only be effected with difficulty, but it will be attended with great loss. [And] He [himself] will occupy a lower place in the kingdom of heaven than he would have done." [p.59] That was surely the case here. Lot's wife was left behind. She did not escape the pull of that world, and Lot must answer for that for it was his decision to take his wife and daughters to Sodom. His sons-in-law perished in the flame as well and for that too Lot was to blame, at least to a great degree. For whether we consider these marriages as what he never should have allowed in the first place or as over which he should have exercised a more godly influence, verse 14 indicates clearly enough how little influenced these young men were by the faith of their father-in-law. And, finally, his daughters would prove to have been thoroughly corrupted by their time in Sodom. They had, whatever their father thought about it, become true daughters of Sodom, which is only to be expected when a father chooses to seek ease, comfort, and prosperity for himself at the expense of the spiritual welfare of his family. And what of Lot himself. Well, we cannot say. What the judgment day will reveal of this man's life God alone knows. But, surely, he himself -- because there was true righteousness within him -- will be the first to say, thinking back on the hill country and his days with Abraham and the lessons he had been taught by his famous Uncle and then upon the reasons that led him to Sodom and the results of that fateful choice -- "the saddest things of tongue or pen, to tell the things that might have been." I tell you as your pastor, my greatest fear in reading to you a passage like this from Genesis 19 is that there are some of you, I fear there are some of you here, who will take comfort from this thought of Lot being saved though as through the flames! You will take comfort from the angel's rescuing Lot rather than feel the fear and dread this history is meant to provoke in your heart. You think to yourself, when you read such a passage and hear such a sermon, well, I am like that, I am like Lot. I know I'm not among the really devout Christians. There is a difference between them and me. They are more serious about their faith than I am, more determined to live a distinctly Christian life. They are more interested in the Bible and in the life of prayer than I am, they are more committed to thinking through their own personal issues of family and employment from the viewpoint of the kingdom of God than I am, they are more attracted to God's house and the worship of that house than I am, the Lord and his love is more in their speech to both the saved and the unsaved than he is in mine. You are prepared to admit this of yourself. You know that, if the truth be told, you prefer the valley of Sodom to the hill country where the godly live. But, finally, you take away from Lot's personal history the message that you can squeak by in the Christian life and you are content to be among those who squeak by; you can be barely saved, and you are content to be among those who are barely saved. After all, you do believe, so you must be like Lot, and so the angels will come and get you too. No, my friend, my church-going friend, my all too cavalier and blase friend. No one "squeaks by" into heaven. Lot didn't either. He was grabbed by the hand and pulled out of Sodom. And while he was saved, the Bible does not give us reason to think that nearly so many who think that they are in Lot's condition will actually be saved at the last. What Lot demonstrates to us is that his salvation depended finally on God's willingness to rescue him, not his willingness to be rescued after all those years of comfortable living in Sodom. Men and women who count on being Lots are precisely those who are in the greatest danger, for they are not doing all that the Scripture commands us to do if we would be saved -- they are not calling on the Lord while he may be found, they are not striving to make their calling and election sure, they are not working out their salvation in fear and trembling, they are not forgetting what is behind and pressing on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of them. And the Bible says people like that are rarely, if ever, saved. Lot didn't think that way, so far as we can tell. God saved him, but not because he was making the proper calculations according to which he had just enough faith to squeak by. And what loss! Don't tell me that Lot, if he was a righteous man as the Bible says that he was, would not, if he could, go back and put right his life so that he didn't destroy his wife and children the way he did! I once had a man tell me that, if his children -- and he had lots of children -- did not walk with God and were not saved, he guessed the Lord would make him happy about it in heaven, because everyone is happy in heaven! Well, I believe that, in heaven, as the Scripture says, "God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes." But I do not believe that Scripture allows us to believe that this means that our humanity and our morality and our conscience and our sympathy will be taken from us. No, I do not believe that at all! When the martyrs, already in heaven, are heard to cry out in anguish for vengeance on those whose wickedness has triumphed in the world -- as we hear them cry out in Revelation 6:10 -- we see real human emotion, connected to real human experiences and losses in this world. And, the Scripture everywhere teaches us to regard the coming judgment as a reckoning of our lives in this world with real, true, and lasting implications for the world to come. "He will suffer loss" says Paul of the man who builds on his Christian faith with wood, hay, and stubble. I do not know, I confess, how to reconcile the one teaching with the other -- the happiness of those in heaven with an honest reckoning with our lives on earth. That does not bother me; there is a great deal I cannot fully comprehend in the Bible's teaching. But, I know that I am forbidden in Holy Scripture to think of my salvation as something I can take as little of as possible and can get for myself without thought of my loved ones or others around me. The man who lives for himself -- whatever he may protest to the contrary -- will die by himself and face eternity by himself. As an aside, let me mention here that I know that some of you may have been expecting a sermon on motherhood this morning. It is Mother's Day, after all. Well, we have a word for mothers here in Genesis 19. It is this: any mother's honest and sincere and heartfelt embrace of this fact -- that, if she would be saved herself, if she may be sure of that salvation and not deluding herself, then let her love God and work out her salvation in such a way as blesses and sanctifies her children; there is the best motherhood. Let them see a woman who does not prefer worldly prosperity and pleasure to the will of God and the kingdom of God. Let them see in her a woman for whom walking with God is the highest and happiest business of life and one that produces the happiest effects for others. Let them see a woman who does not for a moment think of salvation and the knowledge of God as something she wants as little of as she can have and still slip into heaven. Rather, let her joy in salvation be evident to all, her holiness be a blessing and a pleasure to others. Let her zeal for her own soul demonstrate itself in a zeal for the souls of her family. And then you have a mother indeed! A mother who gives birth not only for this life but for that which is to come, which is something Lot's wife did not do, so sad to say. What do you suppose that Lot thought about his life, about the choices he had made, the priorities he had fashioned for himself, when later, from his dismal cave in the mountains he looked down over that still smoking valley, stinking of sulphur, not a trace of his former home still in view. And in the years following, what memories haunted him of those earlier days and the tragedy that overtook him and his loved ones. Did he rejoice in God's mercy to him? Of course he did; certainly he did. Peter tells us he was a righteous man and no righteous man could have failed to be moved, stirred by the thought of God's deliverance of him at the last moment. But what a bittersweet memory that must have been. Not only the shame at the thought of his hesitating and dickering all the way out of the city -- seemingly unwilling to leave even when angels told him of the impending destruction. How ashamed he must have been to recall his pathetic worldliness in that moment. But, still more, the woman he loved lost to him forever. Lot was a righteous man. In all eternity -- even in tearless heaven -- you will not convince him that he was not responsible for her turning round, a turning round that was not only disobedience to the commandment she had received (as we read in v. 17), but clearly indicated on her part an identification with Sodom, a desire to remain, an unwillingness to be separated from the life she had lived there. Lot was the husband and the father. He had taken his family there. They had become intoxicated with that sinful culture because he had exposed them to it and had not taken them away from it as soon as it began to get its claws into them. Imagine Lot sitting in the entrance to his cave, of a warm evening, looking down over the desolation below him. So mused I silently, as o'er and o'er No! brothers and sisters. No man who was saved as through the flames is glad for it. He shivers at the thought that he might not have been saved; that he should not have been saved. He shudders with realization. He loves God for sovereign grace. But he hides himself in shame for the loss he suffered and the loss he caused. And he tells you not to repeat his terrible crime; not ever to suppose that you could repeat it; but, even if you could, never, never to do what he did, to save himself while ruining those he loved. Sin and salvation are terribly serious business. Lot teaches us that the hard way. Only fools treat that business lightly, as he did. The wise take care! |
|
[Home] |