a poet's work. I'd like you to open your Bible with me please to the book of Genesis once more tonight. We discussed last week the sad example of Abram found in Genesis chapter 12 over into chapter 13 in his backsliding, his lack of belief and trust in God, which led to a real tragedy in his life. But he recovered himself. God faithfully brought him back to the altar and there he called upon the name of the Lord once more. The time in Egypt, however, left an impression on Lot, Abram's nephew.
You see Abram got over his backsliding. Lot didn't get over Abram's backsliding. After returning from Egypt, Lot had a new desire summarized in one word, and that word is Sodom. I wonder if we realize the impact of our backsliding. We recover ourselves. God graciously calls us back to himself. We repent. But what about the example that we've left to others? A parent, for example, backslides. Perhaps even for a time deserts the home, eventually comes back.
Bless God, praise the Lord, the home is reestablished. But what has that example done for the children? I think we can say that our example has twice the impact that our advice does. That's true negatively and thank God it's true positively as well. I remember hearing about one primary age child that said in a prayer, Dear God, make me as much like Jesus as my Sunday school teacher. Our example has twice the impact that our words have.
It was not long before Abram realized, after returning from Egypt to Canaan, that he had to separate from his nephew Lot because Lot was backslidden. Read with me the words beginning with verse 5 of Genesis 13. Now Lot, who went with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents. And the land could not sustain them while dwelling together, for their possessions were so great that they were not able to remain together.
And there was strife between the herdsmen of Abram's livestock and the herdsmen of Lot's livestock. Now the Canaanite and the Perizzite were dwelling then in the land. But then Abram said to Lot, Please let there be no strife between you and me, nor 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, and if to the right, then I will go to the left.
And 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, like the land of Egypt as you go to Zor. So Lot chose for himself all the valley of the Jordan. And Lot journeyed eastward, thus they separated from each other. Abram settled in the land of Canaan, while Lot settled in the cities of the valley and moved his tents as far as Sodom.
Now the men of Sodom were wicked exceedingly and sinners against the Lord. Let's pray together. Our Heavenly Father, we ask that the Spirit would be our teacher as we come to the word tonight. As we talk about Lot, I pray that our eyes will be open to his example so that we might learn from him and avoid his tragic mistakes. In Jesus' name, amen. Abram soon realized that he had to separate from Lot because of the difference between them.
Abram was a man who recovered himself from his backsliding and worshipped the Lord. Lot, however, was a carnal man. He was a believer in the God of Abram. We'll see that in a few moments in the New Testament. But Lot was a man who was thoroughly worldly, and his worldliness was evidenced in his love of money and things and of the lifestyle of Sodom.
It is a sad day when a growing Christian realizes that he must get away from his previous Christian friends and acquaintances and make new ones, lest he himself might be caught up in their backslidden lifestyle. But sometimes that happens. Indeed, I think that Paul warns the Church about that in 1 Corinthians 5. He writes regarding the man who was accepted in their church but who was an immoral man, openly so, well known in the community for his immorality.
Paul does not commend them for their embracing of this man who was called a Christian and lived in immorality. Indeed, he rebukes them. Now, he says as he continues writing about that subject in verse 9, I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people. The word associate means to get mixed up intimately with them. I did not at all mean with the immoral people of this world or with the covetous or swindlers or with idolaters, for then you would have to go out of the world.
In other words, he says, when I wrote that to you, I did not mean that you should separate yourselves from everyone who is immoral, every swindler, every idolater, every covetous person. That is the unsaved. But he says in verse 11, actually I wrote to you not to associate with any so-called brother, a professing Christian, if he should be an immoral person. That is one who is sexually loose and does not adhere to God's standard of purity.
Or one who is covetous, that is a greedy person, a money lover, or an idolater, or a reviler, that is one who is abusive and slanderous of tongue, or a drunkard, or a swindler. He says not even to eat was such a one. Those seem like strange words in this day when we hear so much about Christian love. It makes one wonder if we haven't defined Christian love in broader terms than God may.
Because he says here, if there is a person who is practicing these kinds of things as a lifestyle openly, is known for these things, and he claims to be a believer, that we are not to associate with those people, not even to eat with them. May well refer to the Lord's Supper, could have the broader context of even a meal in a home with them. He says, what have I to do with judging outsiders?
Do you not judge those who are within the church, but those who are outside God judges, remove the wicked man from among yourselves? It so seems to me there is a certain principle laid down in the New Testament that even Abraham was following. Abraham recognized that his nephew, though he was a believer in the same God as Abraham believed in, was a man who had a completely different standard for living.
He was a worldly man, a self-centered individual, and so he recognized that they were going to have to separate. Lot is the second example of a Bible backslider, as we are calling this series. Let's notice the root of Lot's backsliding. As I've already suggested, Lot's backsliding really began after his return from Egypt with the greatly increased wealth that he got there along with Abraham.
Lot had left Ur of the Chaldees with Abraham, and it seems as though his trip into Egypt, however long it may have been, rekindled a desire for worldly things, for worldly enticements. He gained financially in Egypt, and apparently he wanted more of the same thing. Therefore, when he was given the opportunity to choose first, he chose the well-watered plain of the Jordan, where he saw what he thought he wanted. We see that in verse 10.
Lot could get more in the plains of that which he wanted in terms of a living standard, in terms apparently of friendships, as well as entertainment. He was a man who returned from Egypt with a real taste for what money could do for him and all that money could buy. So it is with many believers today. God warns us about the danger of the love of money. Perhaps the greatest problem facing the Western Church today is its own affluence.
I think all of us are recognized that the Bible does not teach that money is the root of all evil, but it does warn us about the love of money, which is the root of all evil, or every kind of evil. Jesus warned us that we cannot serve at the same time God and mammon, that is, money. And then again, as the New Testament closes in Revelation 13, there is a warning to the church, the Laodicean Church of the last days, of its affluence, coupled with its complacency.
How easily those two words and how well they describe the end-time professing church. Rich, self-centered. Man said to his pastor, when I had $50,000 I was happy, but now that I have $500,000 I am miserable. So his pastor said to him, well, the answer is easy. Give away $450,000. And the man replied, I can't. Having money, he said, is like grabbing an electrical wire. The more juice, the tighter its hold. You see, that man experienced what Lot experienced.
I suppose money has ruined far more Christians than poverty, because you see, people tend to begin to worship money. I know of no one who worships poverty, but money can become a god. We don't consider ourselves to be in that category of facing that temptation perhaps, but we do. It does not depend upon the balance in one's bank account as to whether he is temptable in that area.
The richest to the poorest among us face the same problem, the same temptation, and that is to love money and what it can do for us, what it can buy. It does not depend upon how many material things we have or how great our material needs are. The same temptation is there. Someone says money doesn't mean that much to me. We have to examine our hearts to see what we will do for it, indeed what we have done for it.
There are people who gladly miss church on Sunday in order to have money, young people who take jobs on Sunday on a regular basis in order to improve the bank account, and parents who even allow that or encourage it. There are those who are willing to neglect their families, indeed ship their families off to others to take care of so that they can accumulate. There are some who compromise morals in order to have money. I tell you that money has ruined far more many people than has poverty.
When a Christian begins to make a major decision in his life based upon money, above what God wants, then I would have to say that he is in Lot's trouble, because that is what Lot did. Money has a part in our decision making, but when money is the final determining factor in our decisions, then we are in trouble. I talked to an individual recently who was given a promotion and a raise if he would uproot his family and move several thousand miles.
But because his family is at a critical age, he feels he cannot do that without damaging them. He has turned down both the money and the promotion, and probably has been shipped into the Never-Never Land of his corporation because of his unwillingness to move at this particular time. But he felt that that was a small sacrifice for the sake of his family. There are many who need to follow his example.
The root of Lot's backsliding appears to have been his love of things and his love of the kind of lifestyle that could be found in the affluent city of Sodom, and then its surrounding cities as well. Having examined the root of his backsliding, let us look at the fruit of Lot's backsliding. In the first place, as a result of his backsliding and making the wrong choice out of the love of money and things, Lot left Abram's fellowship. Now we need to point out that that was at Abram's initiation.
In other words, it was Abram who said, you and I are going to have to separate. But the bottom line is the same. It was a terrible loss for Lot. He needed his uncle. He needed the example. He needed the fellowship. He needed the input of his uncle Abram. But he forsook that as a step in his backsliding. How often that happens with backslidden people.
Whatever the root of it may be, one of the initial fruits of the backsliding is a dropping away from fellowship with God's people who are spiritual. Sometimes the backslidden person will find a group of Christians even within the church which is also backslidden and will fellowship with them. But one of the first fruits of backsliding is that one drops away from those people who are spiritual and seeking to walk with God because there is an incompatibility that is there.
It may involve leaving a class or leaving a Bible study or leaving the church's fellowship, but there is a dropping away and it is a fruit of backsliding. A second fruit that I see in Lot is found in chapter 14, a chapter we don't have time to read in its fullness. If you do take time to read it later on, you will find that Lot was caught up in a military maneuver involving those cities where he chose to live.
He along with many other citizens from those cities in the plain were taken captive by some kings who attacked there. The result was that he was losing everything that he had lived for, including his own freedom and his own selfish ends. I would like to suggest to you that that also is a fruit of backsliding. For whatever it is that one is living for during that time, ultimately he will lose it.
The things, the money, which were important to Lot were all being carried away by four kings who came from Mesopotamia and attacked those cities in the plain. Except for his spiritual uncle, Abram, Lot would have died a slave in Mesopotamia. But Abram loved his nephew and when he heard about what had happened, he took some of his own men. They tracked down those who had attacked the cities of the plain and they rescued the people. Thus, Lot was saved by the intervention of his uncle.
But unfortunately, Lot did not learn anything from that experience. He went right back to the cities in the plain, to Sodom and Gomorrah. He lived there, accumulated wealth, and ultimately, again, he lost everything that he lived for. The second time, by the judgment of God, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, he lost it all. You can read about it in chapter 19.
I believe that Lot in his tragic life gives us a third fruit of one who is backslidden, and that is the compromise of his conscience. Turn with me into the New Testament to 2 Peter and the second chapter, where we have a reference to Lot from Peter's pen. Look in verse 7 of the second chapter. Peter is here illustrating the fact that God knows how to deliver the godly from temptation and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment. He uses Lot as one of his examples.
He says in verse 7, and if God rescued righteous Lot. There is the only reference in the Bible that gives us assurance that Lot was a saved man. That is, that he had believed on the Lord, the God of Abram. He was a righteous man in the sense that he had believed in God and was justified in that positional sense. He was righteous Lot, but he was oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men. That is, the people that he lived around were unprincipled.
They did not have morals, and Lot was oppressed by their sensual conduct. He chose to live there, but he was oppressed by that. Verse 8 talks more about that. It says, For by what he saw and heard, that righteous man while living among them felt his righteous soul tormented day after day with their lawless deeds. So Lot knew what was right. He knew inside him what was right, but he chose to live among those worldly people because they offered what he wanted to live for.
Consequently, he compromised his own conscience. He lived in absolute misery in Sodom. Yet he loved the affluence of the place so much that he decided to remain there. Someone has said, Your conscience doesn't keep you from doing anything. It just keeps you from enjoying it. Well, so it was with Lot. While he was living for what he thought he wanted, he was a man who was steeped in misery inwardly. It seems as though Lot was living a life of spiritual schizophrenia.
On the one hand, righteous Lot, the man who knew what was right and what was wrong. On the other hand, worldly Lot, backslider Lot, who was living in such a way as to destroy himself, a pitiful man. I believe that we can find back in the book of Genesis and the nineteenth chapter yet another sad fruit of his backsliding. In chapter nineteen of Genesis, we will look at verse twelve. The men said to Lot, these are the angels that the Lord sent to Sodom and Gomorrah.
They said to Lot, Whom else have you here, a son-in-law and your sons and your daughters and whomever you have in the city? Bring them out of the place, for we are about to destroy this place, because their outcry has become so great before the Lord that the Lord sent us to destroy it. Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law who were to marry his daughters and said, Up, get out of this place, for the Lord will destroy the city. But he appeared to his sons-in-law to be jesting.
When morning dawned, the angels urged Lot, saying, Up, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be swept away in the punishment of the city. He hesitated. So the men seized his hand. Notice how he hangs on. They seized his hand and the hand of his wife and the hands of his daughters, for the compassion of the Lord was upon him. They brought him out and put him outside the city. It came about when they had brought them outside that one said, Escape from your life.
Do not look behind you, and do not stay anywhere in the valley. Escape to the mountains, lest you be swept away. Lot said to them, Oh, no, my lords. Now behold, your servant has found favor in your sight, and you have magnified your loving kindness, which you have shown me by saving my life. But I cannot escape from the mountains, lest the disaster overtake me and I die. Now behold, this town is near enough to flee to. It is small. Please let me escape there.
Is it not small that my life may be saved? And he said to him, Behold, I grant you this request also, not to overthrow the town which you have spoken. Hurry, escape there, for I cannot do anything until you arrive there. Therefore the name of the town was called Zor. The sun had risen over the earth when Lot came to Zor. Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven.
And he overthrew those cities and all the valley and all the inhabitants of the cities and what grew on the ground. But his wife from behind him looked back, and she became a pillar of salt. In other words, that burning pitch landed on her, and she was dead immediately. Well, what do we see here? Well, we see in the first place that his sons-in-law, those who were about to be married to his daughters, refused to leave the cities. Perhaps they were involved in some of the sin of the cities.
But for whatever reason, they thought he was jesting. They were obviously unsaved men. The worldly man never has a testimony with unsaved people. Indeed, when he tries to get serious about the things of God, they will laugh him to scorn, as did these two young men. And he lost them. You know, he lost his sons-in-law. He may have lost sons in the conflagration that fell on the place. There's no word about them except the suggestion in verse 12 that he may have had sons.
They're only left to speculate and wonder regarding them. His wife is mentioned specifically. She was a native of that area. She turned back, apparently her heart longing and aching for what was happening to the people there, and she died in judgment, verse 26. That left Lot and two daughters. You see, he is progressively losing his family as he moves along. His two daughters went with him, but his two daughters were corrupted by the morals of Sodom.
And as the chapter concludes, they both commit incest with their father. The result is the birth of two children, Moab and Ammon, the descendants of whom became lifelong rivals and enemies of Abram's ancestors, the Jews. My point is this. The one who chooses to backslide, as did Lot, may reap the awful fruit of losing his family. Step by step, Lot lost his family, including the two daughters who did live. It is a tragedy beyond words.
Lot may have chosen those cities with the plain thinking that by choosing this lifestyle and going that direction, he could even give his family more. Because he put the love of things and of money before God, he lost not only the things, but he lost the family that he perhaps hoped to benefit. That is the last mention of Lot in the book of Genesis, chapter 19. Abram goes on the history of his life, but Lot is over at this point. He died an unhappy man. He died a broken man.
He died a wasted man. He died a defeated man. Dr. Henry Morris, who has written a helpful commentary on the book of Genesis, has this probing statement. He says, this is a deeply sobering example of the deadly results that a father's compromise with the world system may have on his own children.
So as we examine the backsliding of Lot, it behooves every one of us here tonight, whether rich or poor, whether one who has many things or one who has nothing, to examine our hearts to see that we are not in the danger that Lot was in, that we are not in Lot's trouble, where we are yielding to the temptation of the love of money, greed, and covetousness, which the Bible terms as basic idolatry. The song that we love to sing says, I'd rather have Jesus than silver or gold.
I'd rather have him than treasures untold. I hope tonight that that in truth is the attitude of our hearts. And that rather than following Lot in the direction that he took in his backsliding, you would follow Abram in the direction of faith and obedience to the living God. Dear friend of mine, he was very successful early in life. He got involved in a business that gave him a lot of money quickly.
The result was that he and his wife and two children had that home that everyone dreams about with a swimming pool in the backyard. He had two fancy cars and a boat in the driveway. He had a job where he bossed lots of people. He was a Christian. But he himself has testified to me that those things got a hold of him so that they possessed him instead of him possessing them. The result was a breakdown in his spiritual walk with God.
And as he began more and more to live for the things that he could accumulate, he began to lose what he was living for. It was not long before he and his wife split up and got a divorce. So he lost his wife and she took the two kids. It was not long after that until he got in trouble in the job that he had. In fact, he was even in so much trouble there that he was rubbing shoulders with the underworld and a contract was put out on his life. He began to lose money instead of make money.
Lost his house, lost his cars, lost his boat, lost everything. And I guess sort of like the prodigal son, it was then that he came to himself. He turned to God in repentance. He could not recover all that he had lost. His wife in the meantime had gone off and married somebody else. He couldn't regain his family. He could never be the same again. But because his heart was to walk with God once more, God began to restore him and to trust with him material things once more.
And little by little, God has entrusted to him a great deal of influence in the city where he lives. Today, several years after these tragic events, he is a man whose life is scarred because of backsliding exactly like Lot took. But he has learned an important lesson. And today seeks to use the things that God has entrusted to him for the glory of God rather than allowing those things to dictate his lifestyle, his decisions to him. Be warned by my friend's example.
Be warned by the example of Lot. And follow the example of Abram. Live the life of obedience before God, the life of faith, the life that seeks to use whatever blessings God may give for the glory of God. Let's pray together. Our Heavenly Father, tonight as we have studied the life of Lot, we find ourselves alarmed. Alarmed because we could see ourselves moving in that direction so easily, every one of us. We are temptable in this area because of the pressures of the society in which we live.
Our Heavenly Father, we ask you to deliver us from that temptation. Deliver us from this snare of Satan and teach us to use whatever you choose to bless us with for your service and for your glory. These things I pray in Jesus' name. Amen. I'd like us to close by singing a verse of the song that I referred to earlier as 446. First verse in chorus. I'd rather have Jesus. Stand together as we sing.