Remember Mrs. Lot

Articles

Philip C. Strong
01/21/25 - Discipleship

I recently heard a speaker say that there are 170 women mentioned in the Bible. I don’t know if that number is accurate or not, and I didn’t bother to check since such doesn’t really matter for our purposes here. However, he arrested my attention when he continued with, “Jesus said to remember just one.” I knew immediately, and you probably do also, that he was referring to “Remember Lot’s wife” from Luke 17:32. Though the overall context of Jesus’ statement is important and contains many things that we should study, understand, and consider, right now let’s just concentrate on, and hopefully learn from, Mrs. Lot.

Lot, and presumably Mrs. Lot (though she is not yet mentioned in the text), when presented with the choice by his uncle Abraham, “chose for himself” the well-watered “valley of the Jordan” in which to live and work. This area included the “wicked” and “exceedingly” sinful cities of Sodom and Gomorrah of later infamy, where Lot chose to live (specifically in Sodom), Gen.13:7-13; 14:12.

After God decided the people of that region were irredeemable (Gen.18:22 – 19:13), of course with notable exception of Lot, cf. 2Pet.2:6-9, the angels of the Lord entreated the whole family to flee with them before they were all destroyed along with the wicked. When Lot’s sons and sons-in-law refused to heed the warning and leave, the angels took Lot, Mrs. Lot, and their two daughters, and fled outside the city, Gen.19:12-16. It is notable that though Lot “hesitated… the compassion of the Lord was upon him; and they (the angels) brought him out, and put him outside the city,” Gen.19:16. But Lot, Mrs. Lot, and their two daughters were given specific further instructions, “Escape for your life! Do not look behind you, and do not stay anywhere in the valley; escape to the mountains, lest you be swept away,” Gen.19:17. And of course, you know the rest of this part of the story. “But his wife, from behind him, looked back; and she became a pillar of salt,” Gen.19:26. Hence the Lord’s warning of Luke 17:32ff concerning the then future destruction of Jerusalem, “Remember Lot’s wife.”

Let’s consider some obvious and some perhaps not so obvious lessons regarding looking back from Mrs. Lot:

You can’t properly move forward while looking back. Such was true for the Lot family, and it’s true for anyone seeking to escape “the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord,” 2Pet.2:20. If we’re willing to become true disciples of Christ, we need to remember His admonition of Luke 9:62, “No one, after putting his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” Remember Mrs. Lot!
Don’t look back, especially with loving longing, at what God has destroyed, or will destroy. 1John 2:15 reads, “Do not love the world, nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” Understand one thing very clearly: “the earth and its works will be burned up,” 2Pet.3:10. The word “anathema,” usually translated as “accursed” (by the NASB), loosely refers to “things devoted to destruction.” Such is the world and all things in and of it. Remember Mrs. Lot!
Don’t look back, especially with loving longing, at that from which God is delivering you. God, through the sacrifice of His Son Jesus Christ, offers a path of deliverance from sin and its temporal and eternal consequences. By the gracious compassion (remember Gen.19:16!) of God, “the creation itself will be set free from its slavery to corruption in the freedom of the glory of the children of God,” Rom.8:21, if it will only look forward to and follow Christ Jesus rather than looking back to that from which He delivers! As James 4:1-4 tells us, our own “pleasures” (and desires for them) and “friendship with the world” destines us to suffer its fate of eternal destruction. Remember Mrs. Lot!

What do you value or “treasure”? Jesus indicated that which we “treasure” lets us know where our “heart” truly is, Matt.6:19-21. As a Christian, are your “treasures” behind you in the world, and garnering your attention; or, are they before you so that you instead long for and look to heaven? Don’t look back at your past with which God is finished and will burn, but forward to the future that He has planned for you with Him eternally.

Mrs. Lot got stuck and paralyzed in a place she was only meant to pass through… because she longed more for and looked back to what was behind rather than ahead of her. Remember Mrs. Lot!