09/30/11

I hope you read yesterday's post.  If not, I encourage you to read that one before this one.

Let's see how Lot's "septic tank" worked out for him.

Remember how Lot "pitched his tent toward Sodom?"

Eventually, in Genesis 19, we see Lot living in Sodom.  God had promised Abraham He would not destroy Sodom and Gomorrah if there were just ten righteous people there... but, unfortunately, there was only four.  Those four were Lot, his wife, and his two daughters.  Unfortunately, they weren't the most righteous, either.  Lot was willing to give his two daughters up to the reprobate men of the city when they wanted to go after the two angels.  

Lot had been so much a part of Sodom that he forgot the ways of the Lord and began to follow the same ways as those that were around him.  He was told to leave the city and leave quickly because of the destruction, but he was so much a part of the city and what was around him, that he didn't really want to leave.  God's Word tells us that the angels had to actually take hold of them to get Lot, his wife, and two daughters out of the city.

God's mercy was all around Lot.  As I read that to my students I couldn't get over how much mercy God showed him!  He was in a place he should not have been, when told to leave he didn't want to go and when he was forced out and God told him to go up to the mountains to be safe, he argued with the Lord and said "Oh, not so, my Lord."  He wanted to go to a small city because he was afraid he was going to be killed somehow in the mountains.  If God sent him there, he would have been safe!

He was still being selfish, but this time there was more to the selfishness.  The life of his family depended on doing what the Lord said and he chose to do his own thing.  In the process, he lost his wife to the destruction of Sodom and he and his daughters ended up with a warped sense of a father/daughter relationship.

When we become like Lot and follow too closely to the ways of the world, we can get caught up in disaster.  I wonder when Lot moved into Sodom if he thought he could make a difference.  He was "sitting at the gate" when the angels came and that shows he had high job in the city.  Instead of making a difference, he became just like the wickedness that was around him.  

This is what we need to learn from Lot.  We can't become like the world.  We are living in it, but we still must be separate. 

Do people look at us and see a difference?  

Do we talk just like the world?  

Do we act just like the world?  

When we are too close to the ways of the world we get caught up in all of the mess.  It is much better for us to listen to the Lord and his desires for our life.  If we do that, blessings will be abundant.