Dr. Lawrence Butler, The Bridge Church, Pembroke

We have finally reached the sad conclusion to the story of the man called Lot. He was the nephew of one of the greatest men to ever live on earth, the Patriarch Abraham.

How powerful it must have been to live as part of this family. This only highlights the dismal failure of Lot’s adult life.

The last we saw of Lot was his angelic deliverance from the wicked city of Sodom, along with his wife and two daughters. His wife disobeyed the command of the angels and “looked back.” She immediately turned into a “Pillar of Salt.” After entering a small village called Zoar, Lot then proceeded to the mountains. Fleeing for his life and being destitute of earthly goods, he succumbs to depression. He has lost so much. All his family is destroyed except two daughters. His wife, sons-in-law and everyone else found in the city are gone. He has no friends, no money and no one to help, not even Job’s miserable comforters (if you know that story). His life was a wretched failure.

Seeking earthly wealth instead of Abraham’s altars, choosing temporal prosperity and position over the Lord God Jehovah, brought him to this situation.

Now it gets even worse. His daughters realize they have no men to be their husbands and no prospects because of their past existence in a place destroyed by God.

They concoct a plan and put into action a most evil scheme. They get their father drunk and then slept with him. Each became pregnant and both had a baby boy. The story here continues for generations as these boys fathered children who became enemies of Israel. One son became the father of the Moabites and the other fathered the Ammonites. They were ultimately defeated by the Israelites. What a sad ending to what could have been a noble life.

Maybe you have made some bad decisions in your life, but as long as life remains, so does hope. Don’t allow sin to finish the job so that there is no recovery. Lot knew to live better than he did, but he just wouldn’t make the change. Peter tells us he was unhappy in Sodom and that he was a good man (II Peter 2:7), but he just couldn’t break loose. You can get out of sin. You can be free from sin’s bondage, but you must call on the Lord to deliver you. Do it, my friend!