UPON two footstools, put on a chair, I mounted; then on the ledge of a tall bookshelf, and with much difficulty turned the key of the glass door. A little more climbing, and I secured the prize I wished for—an old yellow book, with “Miscellany for the Young” outside. I was quite a child, and had often longed to peep in it, but did not find it so interesting as I expected. One question, however, I read, in the few minutes I looked in it, which I have always remembered— “What uncle and nephew parted in peace to meet again after a battle?” I did not then know the right answer, but I daresay you could say at once that it was Abraham and Lot, of whose parting we read in Gen. 13.
I want you to think for a few minutes about Lot, and the choice he made. His father was dead, and he was living with Abraham, his uncle; but both being rich in flocks and herds, they found they must separate, and Abraham told Lot to choose in which direction he would go. It was an important moment in Lot’s life, let us see how he acted. We do not hear of his asking wisdom of God at all; the Bible says he “beheld,” he “chose,” and “he pitched his tent,” but it never says he asked God to “instruct and teach” him in the way in which he should go, and he chose to dwell near the wicked men of Sodom, “who were sinners before the Lord exceedingly.” The choice was quickly made, but its results he felt all his life. And Peter tells us that he “vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds,” but he seems to have lacked courage to give up the fruitful well-watered plain, for even when, after being carried away prisoner, he was rescued by Abraham, he went back to Sodom, and would have been destroyed when the Lord rained brimstone and fire upon it and Gomorrah, had not God brought him out, “the Lord being merciful unto him.”
We see from Peter’s account that Lot was a servant of God, but his was anything but a happy life, and we may trace back much of its misery to the choice he made in early life of his home and companions; he deliberately went into temptation, and though God delivered him, he brought upon himself much trouble and danger, for “the way of transgressors is hard.”
Have you ever noticed in so many of the Bible stories how we are shown that people do not commit great sins all at once, but Satan leads them on little by little? Lot at first did not go into Sodom, but “pitched his tent towards it;” however, in the next chapter we read that he “dwelt in Sodom.” Eve first “saw,” then “desired,” afterward “took” the forbidden fruit. (Gen. 3:6.) Achan “saw,” then “coveted,” and in the end “took” the spoil at Jericho. (Josh. 7:21). And Lot “beheld,” next “chose,” and lastly “pitched his tent” in a place of temptation.
F. E. T.