WHAT is there to remember about Lot’s wife? What was her history? She had, with her husband, settled down in a city doomed to destruction―in ignorance, it may be―but there she was, with the judgment of God suspended over her head, whilst around her iniquity was rife. Her senses were blunted by habitual evil communications. She was as one asleep until awaked by the angels from her death-slumber to the reality of who she was, where she was, and what the end would be. The heavenly ambassador’s message was, “Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed.”
Called out of, as it were, a burning house, she fled, led on by an angel’s hand. Under a momentary heavenly influence, she moved with others, and as others. But her treasure remained in the city upon which she turned her back; and where her treasure was, there her heart was also.
She had started in the race from death unto life, and who could say but that she, too, held by an angel’s hand, would reach the goal at last? But no, she had no goal before her, no object for her heart’s affection to win her onward. And then? And then, once loosed from the angelic grasp, from that divine influence which for a time surrounded her, but which never reached her soul, bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ, she “looked back,” and became a monument to what she was in heart―a petrifaction!
Solemn warning to all who have a name to live, and are dead― “dead” in trespasses and sins―dead in heart and affection to the One who poured out His life-blood to pay the wages of sin, which is death― dead to Him who died to take the sting of sin from the grave, and rose again that God might be just in justifying, and righteously free to give His gift of eternal life.
Ah, well may we remember Lot’s wife, for she loved not the Lord who cared for her safety, and who called her out of danger; but she lagged behind, and “from behind” she “looked back.” “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maran-atha.”
By grace all who are now quickened by the Holy Ghost can say of the Lord, “We love Him, because He first loved us.” Let us, then, take courage and gird up the loins of our minds by looking at a blessed contrast to Lot’s wife―left us by the saints of Thessalonica. They, having heard the message of God’s grace, “turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God; and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus, who delivered us from the wrath to come.” Having found a soul-satisfying object in God Himself, they could, by grace, turn their backs upon the idols which had engrossed them before, and so, without a look behind, they could and did wait for the crown of their joy―the Lord from heaven. Their goal was the Lord Himself. A. C. T.