Editorial

‘REMEMBER LOT’S WIFE’, Luke 17. 25.

The Lord provides no amplification of this reference to Lot’s wife. He just calls upon His hearers to ‘remember’ her. It is therefore the context of that which He is teaching that gives us the reason why He refers to her circumstances as a warning about our own.

The context is ‘the day’. He speaks of ‘the day that Noah entered the ark’, again of ‘the day that Lot went out’, and yet again of ‘the day when the Son of Man is revealed’, vv. 26-30. As He emphasizes His point the Lord says, ‘In that day … let him not turn back. Remember Lot’s wife’. Each ‘day’ was a momentous day and the godly were called upon not ‘to turn back’, nor indeed ‘to look back’. To do so invited disaster, as for Lot’s wife.

What exactly did this dear woman fall snare to? In answer to that we need to think of just three things: Where was she looking? What did this cause her to do? What did she fail to provide?

Where was she looking? She was looking backwards. She was looking at what she was leaving, not where she was going. She was looking where her heart really lingered and not where divine provision lay. She was looking in the wrong direction! It was the direction they had been warned not to look. Beware, believer, we live in precipitous times and we need to look forward not backward. Our goal doesn’t lie in the past; it lies ahead of us where our God is now leading. It’s the outward look we need, not the backward look. A heart that longs only to preserve a past, however special, is a heart that yearns after what God did previously and not what He is doing now.

What did this cause her to do? It caused her to hesitate. To hesitate causes a loss of momentum and may lead to inertia. Beware, believer, now, as always, is the time to ‘launch forth into the deep’, to ‘buy up every opportunity’, to ‘spend and be spent’. We need to know that complacency in the things of God kills spiritual vision dead.

What did she fail to provide? She failed to provide a part for herself in the future of her family. She wasn’t there to protect and to guide her daughters as they became open and vulnerable to an ill-advised pathway. In looking back she made no provision for the future.

Beware, believer, the generation to come is looking at you to set the pattern for them, so look up and look ahead. Do not become a cold, dead pillar to a faith that never realized the purposes of God for its ‘day’ because you looked back. Remember Lot’s wife.

In this, the second issue of the magazine in 2002, the articles continue to challenge the reality and relevance of our Christian profession, both as individuals and as local churches. There are some really important issues raised. There is also something to lift our spirits and to enable us to cry aloud, ‘Maranatha’.