Man

Now that I got you sick of french fries what else comes to mind? I call it my warped mind. Well maybe not so warped. Last night I was thinking of Lot and his wife. If you recall Lots wife is the one who turned to salt.

Lot and his uncle Abram were nomadic alien residents in the land of Canaan. Crowded pasturage caused conflicts between their respective herdsmen. To avoid further problems Abram and Lot agreed to go their separate ways. Unselfishly Abram gave Lot the first choice of land.

His nephew chose the well-watered region of the lower Jordan and Salt Sea. He finally settled his tents near the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. From a material standpoint it seemed a wise choice. From the spiritual one it could hardly have been worse.

It was so bad that God was going to destroy that City. How were Lot and his family to escape the impending destruction? The very angels who were to act as executioners of the cities’ inhabitants were sent to Lot to give him life-saving instructions. What were he and his family to do? Abandon the city without delay!

How did Lot and his family react to those clear instructions? After being rebuffed by his sons-in-law, who considered the threat of destruction to be a joke, Lot kept lingering around the place. Rather than obeying immediately God’s command to flee, he delayed. But the angels did not.

They had their instructions and obeyed them. In the compassion of Jehovah upon him, the men materialized angels seized hold of his hand and of the hand of his wife and of the hands of his two daughters and they proceeded to bring him out and to station him outside the city.

Did Lot and his family then flee to the mountainous region as instructed? Not at once. Whether he was influenced by his wife or not we do not know, but he implored Jehovah’s angel to let him seek refuge in a nearby city. This was granted and they fled to Zoar.

How did Lot’s wife react to this uprooting and sudden change of home? Apparently she did not trust Jehovah’s judgment in the matter. Like her husband, she was indecisive, but with the difference that he eventually obeyed. She did not. She began to look around from behind him Lot, and she became a pillar of salt. She hesitated and lost.

Just as Lot and his family were instructed to flee without delay from their wicked neighbors, so Jesus gave a similar warning to those of his generation. He told them that in time Jerusalem would be surrounded by encamped armies and that the only escape would be flight to the mountains. He warned of the danger of hesitation or delay.

When the Roman armies temporarily withdrew their siege of Jerusalem in the year 66 C.E., alert Christians remembered Jesus’ instructions. They listened and obeyed. They got out of Judea without delay and fled to the mountains to the east of the river Jordan. The unbelieving Jews and any Christians who doubted stayed behind in what appeared to be a divinely protected holy city.

Four years later the Romans came back with a vengeance and wiped out over a million of Jerusalem’s inhabitants. They left the city in ruins. How happy and relieved were those obedient Christians up in the mountains when they heard the news of Jerusalem’s destruction! Their unhesitating obedience had been blessed.

Is There a Modern Application? What can we learn from these vivid pictures of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and of Jerusalem? Jesus Christ used the annihilation of those cities as a parallel for the time. For Christians today this is no time for hesitation. This corrupt system of things is doomed. Why, then, look back in doubt? Lot's wife should be the example for us all. She deliberately ignored explicit instructions. Was her love for God stronger than her attachment to her home and the material things she had there in Sodom?

When the end of this system arrives will you look back at the things you have now? Do you think that your Ipod matters, your Xbox, your guitar, everything you own matters? What's more important, your life or your items. Don't be like Lot's wife. Don't look back on things that don't matter. Continue to move forward.