Lot and a Lesson in God's Mercy

The story of Lot and Sodom & Gomorrah was deeply disturbing to me as I studied it for Bible study. I need to be very honest with you. This man completely disgusts me.  And what makes it worse is reading in 2 Peter 2:4-10 that Lot is called a righteous man. As far as I'm concerned I could find very little in the details of Lot's life to commend him as even remotely righteous!

And yet Peter tells us that Lot is positionally righteous before God. At some point in his life he believed God, like Abraham did, with regard to the promised Christ, and therefore he was positionally justified...righteous before God.   That really ticked me off! He absolutely did not deserve that grace! He was willing to hand over his own flesh and blood to be raped and God only knows what else in protection of the guests in his home as well as in protection of himself! He had to literally be dragged away from his home to escape imminent death...he is selfish, self-centered, a whiner, he complains about the grace that has been shown to him and tries to manipulate the rescue plan. The next part of the story between Lot and his two daughters continued to show me his lack of character. So the more I read and the more I thought about it, I felt increasingly disgusted by him. I was feeling like God should have just left him there. Left him to perish with the rest of the city. From my vantage point, he was clearly not righteous!

But God began to stir something in me...in the midst of my disgust at Lot, He began to whisper this thought into my heart…"you are more like Lot than you want to believe." That did not sit well with me at all!  But the thought persisted. And slowly, I began to realize something. My anger and my irritation at Lot being rescued and called righteous was revealing something that was safely hidden deep down in my heart. My attitude revealed that deep down, I believed that I was somehow worthy of the mercy that God has shown me in rescuing me from death. That somehow,  I was more "righteous" than Lot...I was much more worthy of "saving" than he was. And I began to see, really see, what the story of Lot was all about. The story of Lot is there to show us our true nature and that we are all just like Lot. The disgust I feel at Lot and his complete unworthiness to be rescued from certain death and his being given righteousness that he absolutely does not deserve, is in reality the story of you and me. Just like Lot, there is nothing commendable in us that makes us "worthy" to be shown mercy. (That's why it's called mercy!!!)

And yet in spite of who we really and truly are, in God's great mercy, He rescued us from absolute and certain death... like Lot being dragged out of Sodom was rescued from the holy, righteous, just wrath of God that was being poured out on the city, we too are rescued from God's holy, righteous, just wrath through His perfect Son, Jesus, who came to absorb the wrath that we deserved. And not only did He absorb God's wrath for us, but He then bestows on us His perfect righteous life through faith in Him. So just like Lot, we are rescued and we are called righteous. This is astonishing!

Seeing myself as Lot has made me realize just how absolutely shocking and electrifying the gospel is...how amazing is God's grace! "Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness!" And my response to this love,  "I say to myself, 'The LORD is my portion...'"(Lamentations 3:22-24)