One of the hardest things to do as a preacher is to take the characters in the Bible and make their stories relevant to the present-day audience and to do it in a balanced way without embellishing too much one way or the other. In my opinion, the life of Abraham’s nephew Lot, and his family, is one of the most interesting and a story that carries a powerful warning to professing Christian believers today. I believe this is by Divine design. After all, it was the Lord Jesus who said to the disciples, “Remember Lot’s wife.” Many people misunderstand that to mean only Mrs. Lot. In fact, it’s impossible to know her story (let alone to remember it) without remembering him and their two daughters. In the last 24 years of ministry, as I studied this man and his family, God began to help me understand that story in the light of this present age of Sodom, and it is frightening.
In the introduction, I mentioned revivalist Leonard Ravenhill’s book, Sodom had no Bibles. My premise for this book is that in the Age of Sodom, there are plenty of Bibles, and Churches on every corner… and the Lot family would be the average believers in most of them. Don’t think so? Let me try to make my point.
The Bible, in 2 Peter 2:7-8, calls Lot a “righteous man” with a tormented soul because of the setting and situations he lived in, a condition that many people in today’s Protestant and Evangelical churches share. The reason his soul is troubled, the Bible says, is because of his daily living in that city. Which brings up some questions not easily answered. Why did this man and his family stay there? In fact, how did they get there?
Contrary to what some preachers may think, Lot had almost as good a start in the life of Faith as his uncle Abraham did. It is true that God called Abraham directly, but that does not mean that Lot was an unwanted addition to his caravan the day that they started off from Haran. Lot had a choice. Abraham’s younger brother, Nahor, stayed in Haran, and if he wanted, Lot could have stayed there comfortably. But he decided to follow Abraham out. I do not know how many people at that time knew Abraham’s testimony about how God had spoken to him. In that point in time, who would believe that story? Like our times, I doubt that anyone would accept without reservation someone who “heard a voice in his head.”
It certainly was a life-changing experience for Abraham, but one so new that it would not be surprising if he had difficulty explaining it to people around him! Think of the conversation: “Hey Abram (before his name was changed to Abraham), where are you going?” “Sarai and I are leaving town.” “Where are you going?” “I do not really know; somewhere.” “What direction are you heading?” “I do not really know, probably with all the other traffic going the other way on the fertile crescent.” “Where are you heading?” “I do not know.” “Why are you leaving town?” “A voice came to me and told me to leave for a better place.” What?”
I think it is entirely possible for such a conversation to have happened, and that most people would have looked at Abraham as an idiot.
Not his nephew Lot.
I do not know what kind of relationship these men had, but it had to be a special one for Lot to follow his uncle out of Haran and into the unknown. Whatever he learned about God, he learned second hand through Abraham who himself was a novice. We read in Genesis 12 only the beginning of years of journey and life experiences. And what kind of experiences, what kind of conversations they shared!
They came into the land of Canaan, the area where the descendants of Noah’s second son, Ham, settled. Powerful cities were all around as they crossed into the Levant. Damascus, Dan, Hazor, and especially the massive cities and suburbs of Sodom and Gomorrah were towering over the plain of the Jordan River valley.
The Bible says that God spoke to Abraham as they came into the land and told him that this was the land that one day would be given to his descendants, all of it. Now imagine Abraham trying to explain to his family that the “voice in his head” told him that. They are entering into a land with a small caravan while there is international traffic going up and down, to and from Egypt, through the Way of the Sea (Via Maris) and the Kings Highway, where there are powerful city states North and South of them. “God told you that he would give all of this to us? To our descendants after us?”
Who would believe him? For a while, Lot did.
Abraham was excited any time he heard that voice… excited enough to build an altar to the God – the Voice – who spoke to him. That act right there probably caught Lot’s attention (and everyone else’s) more than anything else. Why?
Contrary to what some people think, altars were rather large piles of stone, with large stacks of wood on top, on which sacrifices were burned. They were not structures that were relatively small. When Abraham built one, everyone in the surrounding area could see it. One could say that Abraham was inviting unwanted attention, particularly as he and his caravan were living in the open. Nonetheless, it was a demonstration that he took his newfound religious experience and his Faith seriously. Abraham appreciated the fact that his wife and nephew, and his nephew’s wife and baby girls knelt down with him at the altar. It certainly marked them as people who were different from everyone else around them. And it was a clarion declaration that he believed what the Voice had said to him.
Before he met a king named Melchizedek, he did not know if there was another person who shared his religious experience. He really did not even know what to call the God who was talking to him, but the experience was profound enough for him to build altars in every place where he heard God’s Voice.
God told Abraham to stay in the open, in an area that was probably one of the most war prone areas in history. They stayed in tents. If there was a person who identified closely with Psalms 91, it was Abraham and his family, and the people who journeyed with him! The altars served as markers, milestones and monuments to remind Abraham of how he got to this place and especially Who had been speaking to him, preserving and prospering him, all the time since he came into the land. Lot respected that, and for a while was intrigued enough to desire to know more about what his uncle was experiencing.
Abraham took this course of life by a choice based on Faith. And in the beginning Lot followed suit and experienced God’s blessing as a result. Every time they experienced material blessings and gains, Abraham would gather the caravan at the altar to give thanks, and each time he would remind everyone that God was the source of all these blessings and successes.
Those who read the Bible have to be constantly reminded that except for one Person, every other character is imperfect. Meaning, only in the person of Jesus Christ did God come down to Earth and was perfect in every way. Everyone else had problems, made mistakes and blunders, and oftentimes got into trouble by presumption. Abraham is a prime example of this. And while we can praise God for His wonderful Grace which does not let us go, there is a cautionary lesson to learn from his (and other people’s) personal failures, even when the Grace of God is extended in those moments to bring a person like Abraham through it.
Lot was watching. And while he learned certain things that could be considered positive, there were assumptions from the negatives that would lead to choices that would eventually to Sodom.
We should not be overly judgmental of Abraham. Between Genesis 12 and Genesis 21 (the birth of Isaac) spans a period of 25 years. A great Bible study assignment would be to count how many times Abraham heard the Voice of God during that time. In half an hour we can read the 9 chapters, but the reality is that it was only about five or six times total during those 25 years that God spoke to Abraham!
Daily life decisions, long term plans… Abraham had to make those decisions with as much “common sense,” and hope in God, as he had for the moment. We take for granted today that we have the printed Bible in our hands, and Bible apps on our phones. Pentecostal churches are filled with prophets (real and so-called) who can give a person the “word of the Lord” at any given moment. Imagine when a person has none of those things at his disposal and must decide on a course of action.
Most preachers will say that Abraham should not have gone down to Egypt. That’s probably right, but when one looks at the context of Abraham’s situation, at that moment, what else would a person have done? Abraham did not have much experience at that moment. Should he have asked God what to do? Yes, but how many people who were novices in the Faith can say they have done that, or would have the experience of Faith to obey if God would tell you to do something that is considered “abnormal” (i.e., Isaac)? I would say 99% would not.
There is one detail, however, that escapes notice at this point. He did not go anywhere near Sodom. While famine could certainly have affected Sodom, the region had enough water to do more than just survive, just like Egypt with the Nile River. Which was the better choice? Sodom or Egypt? (Probably a good time to read Revelation 11.)
Egypt was the place that changed everything for Abraham. Abraham and his family and the caravan went down there and became financially even more prosperous. But that was a secondary issue. While down there, Abraham’s faith wavered in the face of natural fear. Sarah was very beautiful, and Abraham feared that he would be killed by someone who wanted to take her away. The irony of this point should not be missed. Lot may have wondered why his uncle was suddenly afraid about a matter like that when they had been living in the wide open in Canaan and where such dangers were always present in the regions they grazed in. What was it about Egypt that changed everything?
Abraham told Sarah to say to everyone that she was his sister, a secret that Lot would have been privy to as well. Little did they know that it was not an ordinary Egyptian noble who was enamored with Sarah; it was the Pharaoh himself. The lie was told by Abraham and Sarah, and Abraham profited financially because of it.
Mind you, Lot participated in none of this exploitation, and he had a wife and two small daughters! Lot profited financially from Abraham’s deal, but he did not have to make any personal/moral compromises for that, and I am sure that made quite an impression on Lot as well. It could have been the moment where Lot lost some of the respect for his uncle, where the talk about God lost its significance in his life. He listened politely, but from that point on, Abraham’s talk about God was being ignored. It should not have been; after all, God moved upon the Pharaoh and all his kingdom to bring Sarah out from his harem, and Abraham and his caravan left Egypt with a mighty increase in their treasures. He could not think about the goodness and providence of God, but rather wondered why they had come into such a dangerous situation to begin with! Things had changed.
When they got back to Canaan, the gigantic size of their livestock was making life difficult. Pastureland and water, though plentiful, would not accommodate both ranchers together. At least in the area where they were standing at that moment, the area later known between Bethel and Ai (Genesis 13:3-4). The shepherd and ranch hands began to fight. It was at this moment that Abraham took his nephew to a hill to take a look at the panorama of the land they were in.
To use the term that Dr. Collins made popular in his book, the Kikkar of the Jordan was before him. According to him, this area was an enormous circular disc shaped area that was (and even now is) one of the most fertile, as well as watered areas in all of the Levant. And in comparison to the land around it, it stood out because of its agricultural prosperity as well as for the financial traffic of caravan that was moving in and out through it. One of two international trade routes in this region passed right next to where the city of Sodom was located.
Standing on the hill overlooking this area, Abraham and Lot had a serious conversation, not just about how to handle the problem that they were having with regards to their mutual business interests, but also with regards to life choices. Until this moment, uncle and nephew had traveled many miles and years together, from the Ur of the Chaldees to Haran to Canaan to Egypt and back to Canaan. The two were attached to each other perhaps as surrogates to one another; a surrogate son to Abraham and a surrogate father to Lot. That relationship would be forever changed from this moment, though they most likely were not aware of it.
Abraham said to Lot, “Please let there be no strife between my herdsmen and your herdsmen, for we are brothers. Is not the whole land before you? Please separate from me, if to the left, then I will go to the right; or if to the right, then I will go to the left.”
At this point, many preachers I listened to as a child would commit an eisegetical mistake and say that Lot should have given Abraham that first choice, out of “respect for his elder.” That is reading an interpretation into that passage which is not there. I mean, what is the expectation? That Abraham would have chosen to go into the Kikkar of the Jordan? I seriously doubt it.
Lot did not intend to end up in the city of Sodom, but rather in the nice areas around it: “Lot lifted up his eyes and saw all the valley of the Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere; this was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, like the garden of the Lord (Eden – Genesis 2), like the land of Egypt as you go to Zoar.” And he made his choice.
I am sure the wives were part of the decision making. Sarah was looking at Abraham wondering what on earth was going on. Lot was looking at his wife who was standing with their two daughters (possibly in their early childhood years). Like any family, they had their hopes and dreams, expectations for the future. They were a close family. Sarah was Lot’s aunt, and probably was close enough to his wife and children to look at them as surrogates as well. She did not want to send them away as she would later with Hagar and Ishmael. Perhaps they cooked and cleaned together, ate together. Sarah was the beautiful doting auntie to those two girls, probably a role model to emulate. Something that neither Lot nor his wife appreciated at the moment. (One has to wonder if they ever thought back to Sarah while living in Sodom.)
Lot knew about the God his uncle followed, but following God’s plan or purpose was not a major priority for him. The Egypt experience had left a couple of impressions on him. For Lot, his uncle’s excursion into Egypt was for financial survival or opportunities rather than it was for personal care. After all (he may have reasoned), his uncle risked his beloved wife and became doubly prosperous for it! Perhaps Lot thought, he did not have to risk his life and go down to Egypt for that sort of gain. A serious consequence of Abraham’s failure of faith.
Any talk about morality, safety, and the future was only understood with the proverbial/perennial business “bottom line.” That God had saved Abraham and Sarah was not something he was thinking too much about. Abraham could talk all he wanted to about his “children being like the stars of the heaven” or that God would give them the Land of Canaan from the “river of Egypt to the Euphrates.” At this point, Lot thought the whole idea was ridiculous. “If it makes uncle feel better to have his fantasy, then that’s his fantasy.” Lot wanted to go in a different direction.
Think about how many believers in the Church have uttered those same words and harbored those same thoughts. O sure, we would camouflage it like Lot did. “It’s for the family.” “We have a chance at better opportunities.” “A better house.” Et cetera, et cetera.
Lot was not fooling himself as much as he was distracting himself, and for the time being, that was possible. He fooled himself by being unaware of the degradation that was bringing him closer to a place that his uncle had avoided. Sodom.
The Bible does not say that Abraham tried to talk Lot out of his decision. Maybe he felt that Lot was within his rights to make whatever choice he wanted. He was old enough, had wealth enough, and had sense enough to know the realities around him and to make grown-up decisions. Should Abraham and Sarah have said something? Perhaps they felt that they had become an imposition on Lot and his family. Maybe Abraham suspected that something had changed in the heart of Lot and his wife, and maybe even to a lesser degree for Sarah, but that’s for later. Whatever the reasons were, Lot and his family and all his business and servants moved out.
If Abraham had any second thoughts or worries about the situation, he kept silent about them. Time would tell who was the wiser. One thing we do know is that God spoke to Abraham right after the parting: “Now lift up your eyes and look from the place you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward; for all the land which you see I will give to you and your descendants forever. I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth so that if anyone can number the dust of the earth, then your descendants can also be numbered. Arise, walk about the land through its length and breadth; for I will give it to you. (Genesis 13:16-17).
Lot did not hear that. And that was the cause of all the problems that would come his way in the future. At this point of his life, he did not really think it was important to hear God’s affirmation of his choice. He just assumed that God would come along with him; after all, he was blessed. A dangerous assumption with drastic consequences for the future.
THE NEXT CHAPTER: THE DOOM OF CHOICE.