Remember Lot's Wife

Luke 17:32 KJV Remember Lot's wife.

I. INTRODUCTION—HONORING HEROES

-If you only look at the calendar in a year’s time, you will discover that there are certain days set aside to honor people. There are a few days every year that schools, banks, government offices, and many places of employment are closed for their birthdays.

• George Washington’s Birthday

• Abraham Lincoln’s Birthday

• Martin Luther King’s Birthday

• Columbus Day

-There are other holidays that we observe every year in honor of some event.

• Independence Day

• Labor Day

• Veteran’s Day

• Memorial Day

-Furthermore there are many cities across the United States that have various monuments in honor of some great man or woman who performed some skill, job, or led some great cause that changed the shape of the world.

-Men’s lives will always be preserved on the pages of biographies so that those who want to can find inspiration from reading them.

II. REMEMBER LOT’S WIFE

-Because the lives of men in secular history are important, I should prevail on you that those who had some part in church history would be even more important to us. I would encourage you to remember:

• The Patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob

• The Prophets—Nathan, Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, and Jeremiah

• The Apostles—Paul, Peter, John, James and the others

• The Martyrs—Stephen and eleven of the Apostles and a host of others

-Given time, I would encourage you to be thankful for those who brought the ridiculed and mocked at apostolic message to where it is even today. We need to remember men like A. D. Urshan, William Seymour, G. T. Haywood, O. F. Fauss, and others who have brought things into our lives.

-When Jesus told His disciples to remember Lot’s wife, it comes as a startling command. The reason that it is so startling is because this was the only person recorded in Scripture that Jesus ever told anyone to remember.

-He did not tell them to remember any of the Old Testament giants of men. There wasn’t any mention of patriots, heroes, or nobles. Jesus wanted his disciples to remember someone who started but did not make it!

-If the Lord commanded for us to remember her, we have to ask ourselves, “What is there to remember about this woman?”

-When you look back to remember things in the lives of people, invariably there are historical associations that surround them that made them what they were.

-Think of World War II and a flood of information comes to us when we begin to think about Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, George Patton, and Winston Churchill.

-Think of the world of medicine and you run across names like William Fleming who discovered penicillin, Jonas Salk who invented the polio vaccine, Clara Barton and Florence Nightingale who influenced the American Red Cross and the profession of nursing.

-All great people are somewhat defined by the circumstances under which they are forced to contend with in life.

-There are other historical figures that the only real thing that is known of them is when they were born and when they died.

-In reality, playing into this whole idea of historical discovery, birth, name, good works, evil deeds, extraordinary devotion to God or vile sinfulness, people gain attention because of actions of their lives.

A. Lot’s Wife

-When we get to Lot’s wife, it appears that her birth, past, and existence really means nothing at all. There is never a name give to her. We know who Abraham’s wife is and we know who Nahor’s (Abraham’s brother) wife is but Lot’s wife is never identified.

-She makes her appearance in Genesis 19. It is a once and for all appearance. We know nothing of her family, her habits, her friends, and her background. How could we remember someone with such a vacuum of information about?

-Yet I interject this small but important fact about our Bible: there are cases all through the biblical history where unnamed characters mattered greatly. If only we were to look at the great unnamed woman of Scripture we would find much food for our spiritual life.

• The widow of Zarephath (1 Kings 17:9-10)

• The woman of Shunem (2 Kings 4:8)

• The woman of Samaria (John 4:7)

• There are others the Lord healed in the Gospels

-Lot’s wife fills this category. Oddly enough we never read of her in any of Lot’s movements through the book of Genesis. Even in the conversation that Lot had with the angels who were telling him to leave the city of Sodom and Gomorrah, they do not mention her:

Genesis 19:12 KJV And the men said unto Lot, Hast thou here any besides? son in law, and thy sons, and thy daughters, and whatsoever thou hast in the city, bring them out of this place: