The Life of Lot: More Bad Decisions

Genesis 14:1-16
Gregory Broderick | Sunday, May 01, 2022
Copyright © 2022, Gregory Broderick

We will continue our study of the life of Lot this morning.  You may recall that, last week in Genesis 13, we saw Lot make the first in a series of very bad decisions.  Pursuing worldly wealth in the form of cattle, Lot parts with his uncle and protector, Abram, the man of God.  Despite living for years under Abram’s protection, Abram’s provision, and Abram’s pastoral and priestly care, Lot takes off for the well-watered plain of the Jordan, pitching his tent near Sodom.  The idea was, “I can go there and have more cattle and build my own empire and my own wealth for myself.”  So Lot left Abram behind in Canaan, the Promised Land that God had shown to Abram after calling him out of Ur and Haran and then back from Egypt.

In today’s text, in Genesis 14, we see that bad decisions have consequences.  Lot is captured during a war between regional kings, including the king of Sodom, and Lot then makes another bad decision.  After a daring rescue by Abram, who rescues Lot from his captivity, Lot goes back to Sodom.

1. Bad Decisions Have Bad Consequences

There is no question that Lot suffered bad consequences from his bad decision to part with Abram, the man of God.  First, we find Lot living in Sodom (Gen. 14:12).   Living in Sodom itself is its own bad consequence.  In Genesis 13, we are told that Lot chose the well-watered plain of the Jordan and set out towards the east when he left Abram (Gen. 13:11).  And Genesis 13:12 foreshadows what we see today.  It tells us, “Lot lived among the cities of the plain and pitched his tents near Sodom.”  By the time of our text this morning, we see Lot living in Sodom itself.  So there is a progressive move away from Abram toward Sodom until Lot is finally in Sodom.  This is quite obviously a bad decision.  Later on, in Genesis 19, Sodom is described as a very grievous place.

We know that God was against the evil in Sodom, and eventually rained down burning sulfur upon it in a dramatic judgment.  But this was not news.  This was not something that happened between Genesis 13 and Genesis 19.  No, back in Genesis 13, we already know that Sodom was a bad place.  At the time that Lot parted with Abram and pitched his tent toward Sodom, its wickedness was already well-known.  Genesis 13:13 says, “The men of Sodom were wicked and were sinning greatly against the Lord.”  It is true that all men are sinners, so we might say, “Sodom was no different than any other place.  It is full of sinners.”  It is true that all unbelievers, all the ungodly and worldly people, sin greatly against the Lord.  But the implication from this verse (Gen. 13:13), and the implication from the severe judgment to come later in Genesis 19, indicates that Sodom was an outlier even among the godless.  It was so full of grievous sin that an outcry had gone up to God.  And we will learn later in Genesis 19 that grievous sins, such as homosexuality and rape and so on, were commonplace.

There seems to have been a total disregard for even the low and anchorless morals on which most society agree.  They did not even have shame to hide what they were doing.  They did not have any regard for the innocent, any regard for the vulnerable.  Indeed, we will see next week in Genesis 19 that they tried to rape visitors to their town.  This is not only shocking to our ears, but it would have been in real violation of the Eastern custom and tradition of protecting visitors.  So you might say that Sodom was the San Francisco of its day, a place where all moral pretense has been abandoned.

Yet despite all that wickedness, Lot heads that way.  And despite all the wickedness, Lot heads in to Sodom.  Second Peter 2:7, which is about the only good thing about Lot that we hear,  tells us that Lot was tormented by the depraved conduct in Sodom.  Good!  But he was not tormented enough that it stopped him from going in.  He was not tormented enough that he left after he had been there for a while.  Now, perhaps Lot became somewhat acclimated to Sodom over time, or perhaps he viewed it merely as a tradeoff:  “I have to put up with this torment in my soul, but there are certain business and social advantages, so it is just the way it is.”  Whatever the case, Lot went from living in the center of the kingdom of God with the man of God all the way to living in the center of wickedness.  And it seems to have happened in fairly short order.

The truth is that one bad decision usually leads to others.  Sin number one creates problems, and the unrepentant person solves that by sin number two and sin number three and sin number four, instead of repenting of sin number one and going back the way you should go.  For example, you may covet something.  That is a sin.  You may give inordinate thought or inflamed desire for something that is not good for you to have, either because it is inherently sinful or because it is something that God says should not be for you.  So you covet, and that is a bad decision.  But you compound that decision and you take.  And then you deceive others and lie to cover it up so that you can hold on to it for a little while longer.  Pretty soon, you give yourself fully over to Satan who tempted you with that coveting in the first place.  That is the sad story of Achan, as we know.  He saw, he coveted, he took, he hid, he lied, he died.  It is the story of Gehazi.  It is the story of Judas.  One seemingly small bad decision leads to another leads to another leads to damnation.  Those people—Achan, Gehazi, Judas—could have repented at any point.  But instead of doing that, they kept digging deeper and deeper until it was just too late.  One bad decision to another until you are destroyed.

A slightly different version of this is that one bad decision opens up new avenues for temptation—temptation to commit sins which would not have been otherwise available if you had not done the first sin.  It seems likely that is what happened in the case of Lot.  Recall that Lot originally parted with Abram because the land could not support all of their big flocks and herds that they had when they were living together.  Yet by Genesis 14:12, Lot is living in the center of the city.  I do not know exactly what the city of Sodom looked like, but it was probably not a good place for a large amount of flocks and herds.  So what happened to all those flocks and herds?  You see, the original problem that took you away from the man of God apparently was not a big enough problem that you had to stay out in the fields with the flocks and herds.  Where did all those flocks and herds go?  Perhaps they were sold, or perhaps he had them managed by others outside the city.    But the original justification for parting with the man of God is over now.  He could have done those things in the first place, by the way—sold them or had them managed by others far away and stayed with Abram, perhaps a version of “work from home” in their time.

But having decided to move near Sodom, or toward Sodom, Lot is now drawn into Sodom all the way.  It is, as we said, a very wicked place, and we do not know exactly why or how he ended up in Sodom.  Maybe it was Mrs. Lot’s idea, and so he moved in for her.  Or maybe the Sodomites offered to intermarry with his daughters.  We see that not only later on in chapter 19, as they are engaged to others, but we see this same thing with Jacob and the Shechemites in Genesis 34:  “Let them come in and we will intermarry with them, and everything that they have will have will become ours.”  Maybe they offered Lot prominence, a spot as an elder at the town gate or as an important merchant.  Or maybe Lot just preferred city life.  That is my personal bet:  That Lot preferred city life.  But whatever it was, Lot went toward Sodom and then into Sodom, a wicked city.  He never would have done so or had the opportunity to do so, or have been in a position to be tempted, had he just stayed with Abram.  If he had just never made that decision to part with Abram in the first place, he would not have been tempted to move into Sodom.  And if he was tempted, Abram probably would have told him, “Don’t do it.”

We must be very careful in decision-making.  Our decisions have consequences.  In a way, our life is just a sum of the decisions that we make.  It is the result of the consequences, good or bad, of the decisions that we make.  So we must be very careful because we do not know what future ramifications our decisions will have, especially our ungodly decisions.  As we see from Lot, they often take us much, much farther than we ever thought we would go.

So you may think that you want to go far, but ask yourself:  Go far to where?  Maybe you think that innocent flirtation at work is no big deal.  It is no harm.  It is just a little flirtation, it is just a little fun.  It is nice to have the attention.  It is harmless.  But you may soon find that your flirtation at the water cooler leads to flirtation at the bar, or on the business trip, and soon to adultery and destruction.  “It would never happen to me” is a very risky statement to make.  Young people, maybe you think, “I just want to get out and ‘experience the world’ for a few years.”  Now, only someone with no experience of the world would want to go out and “experience the world.”  But it is a temptation, especially for young people.  But you may soon find yourself like Lot, living in Sodom, living like Sodom, and thinking like Sodom.  You will find yourself a practical Sodomite.  We see it here with Lot, and we have seen it with many people in our years of ministry.  So do not give into that.  It may seem like a small thing, but don’t give into that temptation.

Worldly compromise is always a one-way compromise.  It is always a one-way negotiation.  You may compromise with the world, but it will not compromise with you.  So first you go half-way.  You go and live near Sodom or pitch your tent toward Sodom.  Next, you go three-quarters of the way; you are in Sodom.  Pretty soon, you are all the way in.  Your children are engaged to Sodomites, intermarrying with them.  You are offering them up for sexual immorality, as Lot will do in Genesis 19.  And you are unwilling to leave Sodom even in the face of imminent destruction.  But it happens step-by-step.  You keep going half-way, and eventually you get all the way there.  This is what happens in real life.

The world only ever demands that you become more like it.  It will never become more like the people of God.  It cannot and it will not.  The children of God are light, and the world is darkness (Luke 1:79).  Our job is to shine the light into the darkness (John 1:5) so that they may turn from darkness to light (Acts 26:18).  We are not to compromise with the darkness of the world and become some kind of a dim haze for, as we are told in 2 Corinthians 6:14, “What fellowship can light have with darkness?”  There is no compromise between light and darkness.  You are either light or you are dark.  We are not to compromise.  Friendship with the world, compromise with the world, compromise with the darkness, is simply moving away from God.  James 4:4 tells us that it is hatred for God.  Instead of dimming the light, we are to shine the light brighter and brighter by becoming more and more conformed to the likeness of Christ, who is the light of the world (Rom. 8:29).

So leaving Abram was a bad decision, and heading towards or near Sodom was a second bad decision as a consequence of that first bad decision.  Moving into Sodom was a further bad decision.

A second bad consequence:  Lot is captured in a war.  Living among the Sodomites is bad enough, but Lot is not troubled enough to leave.  Then, in chapter 14, Lot is captured and carried off in a war—in a war that he does not seem to have had anything to do with.  The background here is that the kings of Sodom and some other cities on the plain rebelled against Kedorlaomer, the regional power, and against his allies.  Kedorlaomer and his allies swept through the region and defeated all those armies, including the kingdom of Sodom, leaving those cities defenseless.  He wiped out the other kings and their armies.  There is no one left to defend those cities.  So all those cities and all their goods and all their people are ripe for plunder, as was the custom in war at the time.  And in keeping with those times, the victorious kings, the conquering kings, go and seize all the goods and all the possessions and all the people.  That was their right after they won the war.

From Lot’s perspective, this is about as bad as things can get.  Men would most likely be killed and women carried off.  Useful men might hope to be enslaved, and Lot was probably a pretty useful man.  He had flocks and herds.  He probably had some kind of administrative experience, and he had talked his way out of death and into slavery.  But he is destined for slavery to the victorious kings.  His wife and his daughters would become slaves or concubines, to be used by the victors in whatever way they desired, and there was nothing Lot could do about it, and no one to help.  All the regional kings have been defeated.  The king of his city has been defeated.  Where could he turn to for help?  There is no United Nations to go to.  There is no Geneva Convention or set of rules for how we are going to treat people.  And any other super-power able to defeat those kings who defeated you is only going to take you as plunder also.  So maybe there are a relatively better or worse versions of being plunder, but you are plunder all the same.  You have no bargaining power.  They took all your stuff and all your people.  You have no leverage of any kind.  It is a hopeless, hopeless situation, and it is a life sentence.  There is no way out of it.

We are not told anything from Lot’s perspective about his brief period of captivity.  But you would think that there would have been a lot of shame, a lot of disgrace, a lot of regret, and a lot of despair.  “What have I done?”  he must have asked himself.  “I destroyed myself.  I destroyed my family.  I destroyed my household.”  We do not really know that he thought any of those things, but it seems pretty reasonable.  There must have been some regret and some recognition by Lot that it all started with a bad decision to part from Abram, the man of God.  We can imagine.  He was being carried back to a distant kingdom.  I don’t know if he had to walk or if they put him in a cage, or whatever, but he had to be thinking the whole time, “How did I get to this place?”  And if he thinks back and looks over his life, he must have thought, “This is where it started to go bad, when I parted from Abram.”

There was certainly time for him to contemplate such regret.  Our text is very compressed, so it makes it seem like everything happened really quickly.  But there must have been time.  We are told that Abram traveled from Mamre to Dan.  It is about 160 miles from Mamre to Dan and then eventually to Hobah, where Abram rescues Lot.  I do not know how long it took them to march that.  But it is two and a half days of consecutive walking to get that far, according to Google maps.  So we can imagine that maybe it was a week, or maybe even several weeks, that Lot was in captivity.  There was certainly time for him to regret.  Plus some other person had to escape and come and tell Abram, and Abram had to get all the stuff together to go pursue him.  So it could have been even longer than that.  Either way, during the week or weeks in which Lot was captive and on his way back to that other kingdom—which is all the way back in southern Iraq past Ur where they came from, all that time—surely in that time, Lot had some regret and some understanding that he had made a mess.  And it all dated back to that day when he chose the well-watered plain and walked out of Abram’s camp.  He must have had some realization that, “It was a bad decision and now I am all on my own.”

The reality is that bad things happen when we are outside of the perfect will of God—when we are away from the place where God would have us.  Assuming that Lot was a true believer (it is certainly questionable, though 2 Peter 2 provides some support), then he suffered needless loss and needless trouble.  He should never have left Abram, the man God placed over him.  There is blessing and protection within the kingdom of God, within the walls.  There is blessing and protection with the people of God.  There is blessing and protection with the man that God has chosen and appointed over you.  God speaks to you through that man, God protects you through that man, and God directs your steps through that man.  There is divine blessing when we are in the center of God’s will.

Just look at Abram as a contrast.  Abram lives not too far away from there, but he is not captured and his goods are not carried away as plunder.  Apparently, Abram was able to remain neutral in this war, or perhaps God simply protected him and turned those kings aside from where Abram was.  Or maybe Abram, with his 318 trained men in his household, was viewed as an unnecessary risk, so the kings reasoned that they would not waste their time attacking him.   Abram was blessed in every way.  We know he was blessed with abundance.  We are told in Genesis 13 that he was very wealthy.  But we are also told here in Genesis 14 that he had 318 trained men born in his household.  That might not sound like a very big army to us, but it is a pretty good personal army to have—318 trained men born in your household.  And you must have the flocks and the herds and the food and the water and all the other things to support 318 trained men and their wives and their families.  It appears that Abram was a serious man, and he had allies (Gen. 14:13).

Lot did not have any allies.  He is living in the city of Sodom.  Probably there were more than 318 people living there, but Lot does not have any allies.  Abram, living out on his own, has allies.  Lot left the man of God for what appeared to be a better deal.  He leaned on his own understanding and his own view of the well-watered plain, but he did not get a better deal.  He ended up in a desperate condition—plundered, captured, and headed for slavery.  Abram, by contrast, stayed where God had placed him.  Maybe it wasn’t as well-watered and maybe it was not as good-looking for the cattle.  But whatever it was, it was the land that God had blessed and that God had chosen, and Lot should have stayed there.

2. Another Bad Decision: Back to Sodom

Despite Lot’s bad decision-making, despite the just consequences of his captivity, God provides a miracle for Lot.  Valiant Abram and his small band track down Kedorlaomer, and north of Damascus they launch a daring nighttime attack with a divided army against what must have been a vastly superior force.  But Abram and his 318 trained men defeat the five kings who had previously leveled four other kings and all their armies.  So this is a small army, yet it went in and totally defeated those other kings. (GTB)   Lot is miraculously rescued, all their people are rescued, and all their goods are recovered.  This is a total miracle.  This all takes place in the context of just a few words, and so it would be easy to blow past it.  But do not blow past it.  It is a total miracle.  Lot went to sleep the night before, a desperate and hopeless man, doomed for slavery, doomed for misery, penniless and hopeless.  But in the middle of the night, he is awakened, and he is restored, and his people and goods and freedom are all given back to him.  It is a total miracle, praise the Lord.  It is unthinkable.

Yet, after that, Lot makes another bad decision:  He goes back to Sodom.  The last we see of Lot in Genesis 14 he has been rescued with all his household and all his goods (v. 16).  It is a miraculous deliverance.  The next time we see Lot, there he is again, sitting at the city gate of Sodom (Gen. 19).  How can this be?  How could this have happened?  What in the world is Lot doing?  What in the world is Lot thinking?  We do not know the exact series of events.  Maybe he stayed with Abram for a while but returned.  Or maybe Abram suggested, “Well, I guess it is time for you to go back to Sodom.”  We do not know.  Either way, it was a terrible, terrible, terrible decision to go back to Sodom.  Having been burned once apart from the man of God, he should have refused to leave him again.  We can think of the example of the godly Ruth or the godly Elisha or the disciples.  They were all urged to leave also, but they all said some version of the same thing:  “Where else can we go?  You have the words of life.”  Lot should have said, “Keep the goods.  Sell the flocks and the herds.  Only let me live with you, God’s man in God’s land under God’s protection with God’s blessing and God’s benevolent lordship.”

But Lot did not do that.  Lot did not say that.  He went back to Sodom and he lived the Sodomite life—maybe tormented in his conscience, but again, still there in the thick of it all, at the town gate, probably as an elder, with his daughters lined up to marry men from Sodom.  Unable to let go of Sodom, even in the face of imminent destruction and fire promised by God.  And as we shall see later, he ends his life in a cave, widowed, disgraced, and totally ruined.

Let us not make the same error as Lot.  We who claim the name of Christ were like Lot.  We too were captive, not to some puny regional king, and not to any other earthly power.  No, we were captive to the mighty devil.  We were carried off with no hope, no leverage, no bargaining position, no hope of self-rescue and no concept of even the need to be rescued.  We were worse off than Lot.  At least Lot knew he was in a bad position and needed rescue.  But when we were dead in our transgressions and sins, we were content enough to stay that way.  We were in complete bondage to Satan and headed not for a life of suffering in some other kingdom on earth, but for an eternity of maximum, endless torment in eternal hell.  And suddenly just like Lot, in the darkest dark of the darkest night, a Savior came, a piercing light through the darkness with the sharp, double-edged sword of His word.  And He saved us.  He rescued us.  He freed us from the bondage of sin.  It is a greater miracle than the rescue of Lot.  God restored us not merely with our earthly possessions, but He gave us eternal life with Jesus Christ, an inheritance and a treasure that cannot be taken away and cannot fade.  He gave us far more than we could ask or imagine—peace with God and peace with the family of God.

Like Lot, we deserved our previous condition having sinned against God, rejecting God and regarding God as our enemy.  In that way, we were worse than Lot also.  At least Lot was bound with chains and guarded with weapons.  But we were bound with our own sinful desires.  We regarded God as our enemy.  But Lot, whatever his problems, never regarded his rescuer Abram as his enemy.  So we were worse than Lot.  And yet, in grace, in great grace, in marvelous grace, God moved, God saved, and God rescued.  God defeated all spiritual forces of evil and set us free.  And God made us His precious sons and daughters by His declaration.

God also paid a far greater price than even our hero Abram paid here.  Abram took a long march.  Abram took the risk of battle that he and his men could be killed and destroyed.  But God did more than that.  He paid a higher price than that.  He sent His Son, His only Son, very God, Jesus Christ, to become a man and to suffer the full wrath of God in our behalf.  And then Christ Jesus died the death that we deserved, and He was raised for our justification.  Then He made it all available to us for free—by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone.  He achieved all the redemption for us.  It is all 100% His work.

Even more than that, He sent a person to us in time with the gospel to speak it to us.  Then he sent God the Holy Spirit into us to redeem us, to apply that redemption, to give us a new heart and a new mind and a new spirit to dwell in us, to live in us, and to move us to obey Him, to love Him, and to glorify Him.  That is a glorious salvation.  As great as the rescue of Lot by Abram was, this is a much, much, much more glorious of a rescue.

Because God did all that, we should stick closely to Him and closely to the shepherds that He puts over us.  Let us never return to Sodom, having been so rescued.  Let us never return to the Sodom of our sin, to the Sodom of worldliness, to the Sodom of the old way of life.  Why go back to the old way?  We have a new life, a new way of life—life in Christ and life with God.  Let us glory in that new life and always live for God, glorifying Him by obedience to Him and by being in the center of His will.

Application

I want to look at some applications before we close this morning.

1. Don’t make bad decisions.

Lot chose worldliness and wealth over God, and he ended up with neither worldliness nor wealth, and probably not God.  He ended up ashamed and disgraced.  Instead of making such bad decisions, let us make good decisions.  First and foremost, let us receive real riches, eternal riches, the free offer of eternal salvation by grace through faith in Christ alone.  And having done that, let us make all other decisions for the glory of God who saved us.  Let us ask only, “What is the will of God in this situation?”  That is really the only question we have left to ask: “What is the will of God for us in this situation?”  What is the will of God for my job?  What is the will of God for where I live?  What is the will of God for me in dating and marriage?  What is the will of God for me as a godly father or a godly mother?  What is the will of God in my friendships, in how I raise my children, in relational life—in anything and everything?  Whether I eat or drink or whatever I do, big or small, let me glorify God by my joyful obedience.

I will not look to the well-watered plain of my 401k or anything else.  No, I will do as God wants me to do, trusting Him to handle the rest and to work it out for good, because that is what He promised to do (Rom. 8:28).  I will find that church that He has designated for me, the church which preaches the true gospel and the whole word of God.  I will sit under the man of God that He appointed over me for my good.  I will submit to my husband that He gave me.  I will submit to my parents that He gave me.  I will submit to those teachers, those bosses, those elders, those pastors or whatever other delegated authorities that He gave me.  Even when my own way seems better, I will submit to them.  Why?  Because God said so.  And I will trust God enough to trust those He placed over me.  I will trust God to lead me through them, always checking, of course, against the objective word of Scripture.  So that is point number one:  Make good decisions.

2. Repent of bad decisions.

If you have made a bad decision, don’t stick with it.  It is never too late to repent of your bad decision as long as you are still alive.  If you find yourself somehow living in Sodom, if you find yourself tormented in your righteous soul by the lawless deeds you see and hear, then do not stay there.  Get out of Sodom and go back to Abram, the man of God.  It may cost you; in fact, it will cost you.  It may cost you your job.  It may cost you your cattle.  It may cost you your social standing.  But it is well worth the trade.  Go to the place of blessing.  Go to the place where there is a man of God preaching the word of God to the people of God that God assembled together in that place.

This will obviously mean different things for different people as your life goes on.  All of our lives are not the same.  You may literally live in the modern-day Sodom.  It is ninety miles down the road that way.  Or you may have made a bad decision in your life that represents Sodom—perhaps divorce, perhaps marital unfaithfulness, perhaps huge debt, or some other thing.  My point is, do not carry on in your miserable estate.  Get out of the misery and go back to the place of blessing.

The worst decision of all, of course, is to have rejected Jesus Christ and His free offer of salvation.  If you have done that, then stop doing it today.  Humble yourself today and come to Christ today, and your face will be lifted up even today.  You will have the joy of life in Christ.  If you look at your life and you do not have any joy, if you look at your life and its relative misery, then come to the correct conclusion:  I need the joy of the Lord.  I must go to Jesus Christ, fall down before Him, confess Him as Savior and Lord, and then I will know real joy.

It will not be easy to do what I just said to do.  It will not be easy, but it will be joyful.  You will have to humble yourself.  Oh, it would have been humbling to go back to Abram and say, “My way did not work.  I made a bad decision.  Please receive me back.”  That takes humility.  You have to sacrifice things.  You have to leave the old way behind, the old life of Sodom behind you.  It may be difficult because you have to give up the large herd of cattle that you thought would bring you happiness, your lifelong dream, as in the case of Lot.  You may live the simple life and not the exciting life you imagine.  But you may live the simple life of a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord.  It is a life of joy.  Whatever it is that you think you will lose, you will gain much more—eternal life, the joy of the Lord, a share in Jesus Christ.

3. Do not double down on your bad decisions.

So (1) do not make bad decisions, (2) repent of your bad decisions, and application number three is:  Do not double down on your bad decisions.   Lot left Abram and pitched his tent near Sodom.  Bad decision.  Then he doubled down by moving into Sodom.  Bad decision, compounding the first with the second.  And most inexplicably, after God intervenes to rescue Lot by Abram’s heroic raid, Lot doubles down again and goes back to Sodom.  It is really baffling, if you stop and think about it.  So do not do that!

If God rescues you from Sodom, don’t go back.  And the application for us is fairly obvious.  We too were captives and slaves like Lot with no hope.  We were slaves to sin.  Most of you hearing this have confessed Christ as your Lord and Savior.  That means that you declared that God has rescued you by His free grace.  So do not go back to Sodom if you have been rescued.  Do not go back to slavery to sin.  It may seem to glitter, but it is filth, in reality (2 Pet. 2:7).  It may seem like you can have it both ways:  “I can have God and my Sodom.  I can have Christ and my Sodom.”  But you will end up, in the best case, tormented in your soul (2 Pet. 2:7).  You may think you can compromise with the world and with the devil and keep some of your sin and have Christ.  That is a lie and a terrible lie from the devil.  It is a lie that is meant to destroy you.  So reject the lie.  Flee Sodom.  Flee sin.  Flee slavery.  Run to Christ.  Run to His people.  Run to His church.  Run to the man of God that God put over you.

There is safety, security, prosperity, blessing, and joy in the kingdom of God, both now and in eternity.  This is not a pitch for health and wealth.  We will have difficult times too.  But there is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit when we are with God.  Satan and sin will offer you all kinds of things.  They are good with offering, but all that they deliver is misery.  Just look at Lot or look at any of these other people that I mentioned:  Achan, Judas, and so on.  The offer was all the glittering things of the world, all the money, all the whatever it is that they wanted.  What did they end up with?  Misery, misery, misery.

So I ask you:  Do you want to be like Lot, or do you want to be like Abram?  The simple thing is:  Be like Abram.  Do what God is calling you to do, and you will be blessed like Abram.  Lot’s life was a total disaster.  He was always chasing material things but only finding loss, misery, and shame.  Abram believed God, on the other hand, and was deemed righteous by God.  He went where God said to go.  His life was not easy, nor was his obedience perfect.  But he was a blessed man, greatly blessed, because he was in God.  Look at Abram’s life.  He had security, provision, a godly family and a godly household, covenant life with God, a friend of God, a hope and a future in Isaac, and a better hope and a future:  Abram received eternal life with God.

Abram is there now in glory waiting to welcome us into glory (Luke 16).  We who are in Christ will see Abram and pretty soon.  That is a reality.  He is in glory and in heaven, and we are going to see him there.  I do not know if we are going to see Lot there or not.  I hope we see Lot there.  Second Peter 2 gives some hope, but I don’t know about Lot.  Abram I know about.  Abram is in glory, and we are going to see him there.  So I ask you:  Are you in Christ?  Are you going to go to glory and see Abram there?  If that is the case, never ever go back to your Sodom.  Never look back on Sodom through rose-colored glasses, thinking, “My life in Sodom was so great.”  Stand with Christ, stand for Christ, and persevere unto glory.

And if you are still outside of Christ, if you are an unbeliever, if you are one of those who is merely “moving about” with the people of God as Lot seemed to do, but you are not truly in Christ, then I say to you:  Don’t stay in Sodom.  Don’t stay in Sodom now and don’t stay there in eternity.  Come out of Sodom.  The rescue is offered to you.  Take the rescue.  Come out!  Receive the free offer of eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ our Lord.  Be saved today, saved forever, and live for Christ.  Amen.