"An Open Letter to Lot's Wife"

"An Open Letter to Lot’s Wife" (Genesis 19:26)

What’s in our hearts indicates where we live (Jeremiah 17:9-10; Proverbs 4:23; Mark 7:20-23). Generally, we don’t want people to know where we live, because we are ashamed (Genesis 2:25). Some of the most brilliant, creative, talented, and yes, loving people live in pig pens.

To look at them, you wouldn’t know that they lived in a house where the front door stayed wide open most of the time; or that the house smelled like soiled linen from the piles of dirty clothes lying in the kitchen because the washing machine no longer works.

When some of us show up at work, at school, or even church; you wouldn’t know that there was not a clean dish at our house. The sink and the countertops are full of them and the garbage cans are running over.

Such is the condition of some of our hearts. When confronted with the condition of our hearts, even in church, we are subject to deny that we live in such conditions. Said simply, we deny that we live in Sodom. Consider the following five points.

1. Many people deny God because they view Him as unfair.

a. A good argument could be made for Lot instead of his wife being turned into a pillar of salt since he did choose to move next to Sodom (Genesis 13:12-13).

• He was also the one who offered his two daughters to the men of Sodom when they came to have forcible sex with the angels (Genesis 19:8).
• Lot’s witness was unbelievable when he was given the chance to persuade people to leave Sodom (Genesis 19:14).

b. Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt for disobeying one command (Genesis 19:26).

c. Things happen to us that cause us to question the basic goodness of God and the fairness of life itself (Matthew 5:45).

d. God not only sees the heart (where we live), but He also judges based on what is in the heart (1st Samuel 16:7; Proverbs 21:2; Jeremiah 17:10).

2. God judged Lot’s wife because she still lived in Sodom.

a. Lot and his family were physically taken out of Sodom (Genesis 19:16), but Lot’s wife, overnight, had some reservations about their leaving (Genesis 19:16, 26).

b. The human inclination is retaliation (Matthew 5:38).

3. You live where you receive your mail.

a. So many of us have been involved in terrible things where we were legitimately victimized. Then God said, “leave it alone, vengeance is mine” (Deuteronomy 32:35; Romans 12:19; Hebrews 10:30).

b. The word “resentment” means to “feel again.”

4. You live in Sodom if your closest friends are there.

a. Lot was always viewed as an outsider (Genesis 19:9), but not his wife.

b. God is going to judge sin and sinners. Believers are called to “come out from among them” (2nd Corinthians 6:14, 17; Revelation 18:4).

c. Proverbs 26:20 reads in the NIV: “Without wood a fire goes out; without a gossip, a quarrel dies down.” There are too many hurting, bitter people in our circles for some of us to get better.

5. If your last known address is Sodom, then you still live there.

a. God allowed us to be hurt for His sovereign reason (Isaiah 45:7; Lamentations 3:37-38; Romans 8:28).

b. When we complain about what was done in Sodom (or holding on to what was done in Sodom), we are questioning God’s goodness or His sense of justice (Romans 9:14; Job 4:17).

c. God got Lot and his family out of Sodom. The Bible reads that the Lord “was merciful unto him” (Genesis 19:16).

d. God spared us, though we may have lost some things (1st Corinthians 3:15).

"Christ First, Christ Only, Christ Always"