“Remember Lot’s wife!  Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.”

Luke 17:32-33 (NIV)

WOW!  These are some powerful words!  I would have loved to be there when Jesus spoke these words.  Every word He said was so direct and had so much meaning.  To understand these words we need to go back to the story in Genesis.  So let’s step back and see what was going on with Lot and his wife.

The story begins in Genesis 19:1, but for the sake of time we will pick it up in verse 15.  Two angels have arrived in Sodom to take Lot and his family out of the city.  After surviving a scandalous and wicked night in which the angels protected the family…  The angels share the plan to leave and ask Lot to gather his family.  It is now time to leave the city and this is where we will pick up our story.

With the coming of dawn, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Hurry!  Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be swept away when the city is punished.”

~Genesis 20:15 (NIV)

Alright, I think this sounds pretty simple to follow!  Don’t you?  It’s now time to leave!  And if Lot doesn’t leave he will be swept away with the city.  Right?  Oh, he also needs to hurry!  Now I’m pretty practical so if I have two angels who are sent to me from God, I can almost guarantee you I’m going to listen.  Well, maybe I should put myself in Lot’s shoes.  He has been living in this city for a little while and right now it’s all he knows.  It has everything that he owns, so maybe I should cut him a little slack.  I think there is a little of Lot in all of us.  We’re not in a hurry to leave the things of this world behind us.  Maybe you can see a little of the next verse inside of you.

“When he hesitated, the men grasped his hand and the hands of his wife and of his two daughters and led them safely out of the city, for the Lord was merciful to them.”

~Genesis 20:16 (NIV)

“When he hesitated…”

How many times have you hesitated to do what God wants you to do?  I’ve been there many times!  Too many times to count.  Unfortunately, our hesitation tells God we don’t think He’s big enough for our problems.  Somehow we think we can handle it on our own.  We want to go back to our Sodom, to the place we are most comfortable… the sin that keeps us bound up.  Why?  Because our fear becomes our companion, instead of walking by faith that God has something bigger for us.  There is no fear in love.  God is love!  He desires to lead us, so He grabs us by the hand to gently lead us to a safe place.

As soon as they had brought them out, one of them said, “Flee for your lives!  Don’t look back…”

~Genesis 19:17 (NIV)

“…Don’t look back…”

Are you still looking back?  Is it doing you any good?  God is calling you to look forward.  God did not want Lot and his family to look back because it represented wanting to be part of the world.  Sodom and Gomorrah had their stuff.  It was full of wickedness and evil.  When Lot and his family lived there, their hearts were not set on the Lord.  They were more concerned about their worldly appearance, than their appearance before God.  What are you concerned about your heart before man or your heart before God?

“By the time Lot reached Zoar, the sun had risen over the land…

But Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.”

~Genesis 20:23+26 (NIV)

It’s so amazing to me that Lot’s wife had reached safety!  She could have settled in.  She should have been thinking about her husband and her two daughters.  She could have done a number of things to start to make a new home, but in her heart she was so fixated on her old life.  She was bound up inside by her sin.  The things that she knew in Sodom, the stuff that she owned, the friends that she had, the life that she lived, and all of it could not compare to being with her family and what God had ahead.  She could have started a fresh life, but she chose to look back.  And in looking back she faced death.  Her direct disobedience was a deal breaker.  She wanted to keep her old life and in return she lost it all (Luke 17:32).  Do you really want to lose it all?  If not, think about handing in all the things that you’ve been looking back on.

Easter is just around the corner.  May this Easter be a time that we celebrate our Savior’s resurrection with an awareness that we have life because of death on the cross.  His life, death, and resurrection are the reason we don’t have to look back.  We have an eternal future, an eternity with the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

“But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.”

~John 3:21 (NIV)