Scripture to Read: Luke 17:28–29
Jesus chose to use a second story from the Old Testament that the disciples would know well. We read in Luke 17:28–29, “It was the same as happened in the days of Lot: they were eating, they were drinking, they were buying, they were selling, they were planting, they were building; 29 but on the day that Lot went out from Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all.” Just as the story of Noah and the flood comes from the Book of Genesis (chapters 6 through 9), so the story of Lot and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is found in Genesis 19. Note again that Jesus points out that people were eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, and building, yet were not worried about any sort of destruction coming. When we read Genesis 19, we do not find Lot to be what we would describe as a man of righteousness. Yet, as God had Peter write about Lot in 2 Peter 2:6–8 we read this, “and if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter; 7 and if He rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men 8 (for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds).” Lot’s righteousness was based on his faith in God, just as ours is also (Philippians 1:11, Philippians 3:9).
Challenge & Application
What is common about the people in Noah’s day, in Lot’s day, and now in our day?
How do you see God using you to be salt and light to this world that is lost in it’s sin?
Don’t forget to pray using the A.C.T.S. (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication) method!