How bad can it get?  How worse will life get?  What will it take for things to turn around?  Will there be better days ahead?  When we find ourselves in the middle of raging wildfires of hate, arrogance, degradation, deprivation, perversion, horrific abuse of the weak brought on by selfishness and self-satisfaction, with no regard for anyone’s life but their own, evil seems to be an unsurmountable enemy. 

If you remember yesterday’s passage, Abraham had a discussion with the Lord about the city, Sodom, where is nephew Lot and his family resided.  The Lord and the men with him look toward Sodom before leaving Abraham.  The Lord turned to the men and said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?” (See Genesis 18) “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous…”

In a cautious rebuttal, knowing Lot lived there, Abraham became an advocate for his family, pleading for them to be spared.  “Will you spare the city of there a few who believe in you?”   The Lord assured him he would spare those who believed.  I wonder; Are we passionate advocates for those who need rescuing by Jesus?

Genesis 19

Sodom and Gomorrah Destroyed

The two angels arrived at Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gateway of the city. When he saw them, he got up to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground. ² “My lords,” he said, “please turn aside to your servant’s house. You can wash your feet and spend the night and then go on your way early in the morning.”

“No,” they answered, “we will spend the night in the square.”

³ But he insisted so strongly that they did go with him and entered his house. He prepared a meal for them, baking bread without yeast, and they ate. ⁴ Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house. ⁵ They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.”

⁶ Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him ⁷ and said, “No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing. ⁸ Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.”

⁹ “Get out of our way,” they replied. “This fellow came here as a foreigner, and now he wants to play the judge! We’ll treat you worse than them.” They kept bringing pressure on Lot and moved forward to break down the door.

¹⁰ But the men inside reached out and pulled Lot back into the house and shut the door. ¹¹ Then they struck the men who were at the door of the house, young and old, with blindness so that they could not find the door.

¹² The two men said to Lot, “Do you have anyone else here—sons-in-law, sons or daughters, or anyone else in the city who belongs to you? Get them out of here, ¹³ because we are going to destroy this place. The outcry to the Lord against its people is so great that he has sent us to destroy it.”

¹⁴ So Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who were pledged to marry his daughters. He said, “Hurry and get out of this place, because the Lord is about to destroy the city!” But his sons-in-law thought he was joking.

¹⁵ 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.”

¹⁶ 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. ¹⁷ As soon as they had brought them out, one of them said, “Flee for your lives! Don’t look back, and don’t stop anywhere in the plain! Flee to the mountains or you will be swept away!”

¹⁸ But Lot said to them, “No, my lords, please! ¹⁹ Your servant has found favor in your eyes, and you have shown great kindness to me in sparing my life. But I can’t flee to the mountains; this disaster will overtake me, and I’ll die. ²⁰ Look, here is a town near enough to run to, and it is small. Let me flee to it—it is very small, isn’t it? Then my life will be spared.”

²¹ He said to him, “Very well, I will grant this request too; I will not overthrow the town you speak of. ²² But flee there quickly, because I cannot do anything until you reach it.” (That is why the town was called Zoar.)

²³ By the time Lot reached Zoar, the sun had risen over the land. ²⁴ Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the Lord out of the heavens. ²⁵ Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying all those living in the cities—and also the vegetation in the land. ²⁶ But Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.

²⁷ Early the next morning Abraham got up and returned to the place where he had stood before the Lord. ²⁸ He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, toward all the land of the plain, and he saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace.

²⁹ So when God destroyed the cities of the plain, he remembered Abraham, and he brought Lot out of the catastrophe that overthrew the cities where Lot had lived.

Lot and His Daughters

³⁰ Lot and his two daughters left Zoar and settled in the mountains, for he was afraid to stay in Zoar. He and his two daughters lived in a cave. ³¹ One day the older daughter said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is no man around here to give us children—as is the custom all over the earth. ³² Let’s get our father to drink wine and then sleep with him and preserve our family line through our father.”

³³ That night they got their father to drink wine, and the older daughter went in and slept with him. He was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.

³⁴ The next day the older daughter said to the younger, “Last night I slept with my father. Let’s get him to drink wine again tonight, and you go in and sleep with him so we can preserve our family line through our father.” ³⁵ So they got their father to drink wine that night also, and the younger daughter went in and slept with him. Again he was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.

³⁶ So both of Lot’s daughters became pregnant by their father. ³⁷ The older daughter had a son, and she named him Moab; he is the father of the Moabites of today. ³⁸ The younger daughter also had a son, and she named him Ben-Ammi; he is the father of the Ammonites of today.

WHAT DO WE LEARN—HOW DO WE RESPOND?

The Lord did indeed spare Lot and his immediate family but did not spare the city of evil perversion.  Evil was overcome by the Overcomer, God, while His angels of mercy protected Lot.  These hands of mercy reached out to grab the hands of Lot, his wife, and daughters when they hesitated!  How did this hit your heart?  What great compassion and love was extended through those hands! 

The command was to “Run and don’t look back!”  But one of them did. We don’t know why Lot’s wife turned to look back at this evil city.  Curiosity? Regret? Wonder over where their next meal would come from? Grieving the loss of friends?  Grieving over the loss of all their accumulated stuff of life as it was?  Even though living in this evil environment was extremely challenging and abusive; she looked back at what was her life, as evil was overcome and destroyed once and for all by the Overcomer. 

We are appalled at Lot’s wife’s response and judge her for looking back.  We might even think; “She deserved what she got—no life at all—just a salt statue!”  “Why didn’t she just obey what the Lord said?” Frankly, I’m surprised I wasn’t turned into a “salt lick” for animals when I looked back from time to time at what I thought was an easier life before following the call of God! We all do it.  Paul reminds us, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God!” (Romans 3:23) The better life is to follow the Call of God.

Paul followed God’s call to leave sin behind and don’t look back with new goals:

“But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.

Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:7-14

The enemy is great but “greater is He (Jesus) who is in us than he (evil) who is in the world.” (1 John 4:4)  Evil works hard to change our minds about God and what He says in His word to us.  It all began with Adam and Eve whose minds were changed about who God is and was.  Since the “fall” of deceptive manipulation, the battle has been raging between God and evil for our souls.  We needed a rescue!

Jesus was sent by God to earth to seek and to save the lost.  (Luke 19:10) Jesus is our Rescuer and Overcomer who daily reminds us to run from the Enemy of God whose goal is to distract, deceive and destroy our relationship with God.  God’s Holy Spirit is our constant Helper in this for we cannot do it alone.  We need God’s power to overcome.  He supplies all we need.

The call of God:

Believe in Jesus who died and rose again to rescue us. Colossians 1:13-14

Confess our sins to Jesus who redeems us from our sins “our sins to be remembered no more”! 1 John 1:9

Tell others that Jesus is the Savior and Lord they have been seeking.  Matthew 28:20

Live the Truth as we tell the Truth.  (Romans 12)  Don’t fake it.

How will we respond?

Jesus is reaching out to grab our hands and rescue us from the darkness of evil. 

Will we grab his hand and follow him out of darkness into the Light?  Will we obey His command to flee to higher ground Kingdom thinking?  Will we seek His protection and follow His plan for protection?  Or will we longingly look back at what was? 

“Resist the devil and he will flee from you” is the promise of overcoming. (James 4:7) 

Cling to the Hand who forgives, heals, renews, restores, and loves us forever.

Run from evil and don’t look back.

Lord,

Thank you for all the ways you have rescued me in my life over the years.  Many lessons were learned and there are more to come for I am a work in progress.  Thank you for saving my soul, making me whole, renewing my mind, cleansing my heart daily of what is not of you, while restoring the joy of you in me and me in you.  Thank you for opportunities, like this daily writing, to tell others about you.  Thank you for not giving up on me.

In Jesus Name, Amen