This week we close out Genesis 19 and say goodbye to Lot. Sometimes it is easy to forget that this chapter of the Bible is about Lot and not about the wicked city he is living in. Lot isn’t done with his bad decisions, and some of the worst are yet to come. Why can’t Lot just trust God and obey? Why do there always have to be arguments and foot-dragging? What can we learn from looking at the end of Lot’s life, as far as the Bible story tells us?
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Hi! I’m Miss Tyler! Welcome to this week’s episode of Context for Kids, where I teach you guys stuff most adults don’t even know. If this is your first time hearing or if you have missed anything, you can find all the episodes archived at contextforkids.podbean.com, which has them downloadable, or at contextforkids.com, where I have transcripts for readers or on my Context for Kids YouTube channel, where I usually post slightly longer versions. All Scripture this week comes from the MTV, the Miss Tyler Version, which is the CSB (Christian Standard Bible) tweaked a little or a lot to make the context and the content more understandable for kids.
This week, we’re going to find out what happens after the angels grab Lot and his wife and his two daughters by the hands and force them out of the city. That’s right—Lot knows that God is going to destroy that terrible place but he still doesn’t want to leave. What the heck is up with that, Lot? What on earth are you even thinking about? It’s time to start running! We’re going to start in chapter 19 verse 17 and we will get as far as we are going to go in this chapter. Next week we are back to Abraham and Sarah. Lot is totally annoying and so frustrating. I will be glad to never talk about him again. But, the Bible wants us to know about people like Lot and not to be like them—greedy, stubborn, and selfish even though he does one good thing in his life plus he is more righteous than his neighbors, but that isn’t saying much. When Moses told this story, he wanted everyone to be facepalming and rolling their eyes as they listened to the tales of Lot’s antics over and over again. Lot is one big mess of a nephew, husband, father, host, and neighbor. But this story wouldn’t be in the Bible if it wasn’t important—we learn a lot about God in how merciful He is with someone like Lot. We have to remember that when we are frustrated with this or that person.
The angels brought them out and left them outside the city.As soon as the angels got them outside, one of them said, “Run for your lives! Don’t look back and don’t stop anywhere around here! Run to the mountains, or you will die!” But Lot said to them, “No, sir—please. You have shown me great kindness by saving my life and so I know I have found favor with you like a servant with his master. But I can’t run all the way to the mountains; the disaster and destruction of the cities will catch up with me, and I will die. Look, this town is close enough for me to flee to. It is a small place. Please let me run to it—it’s only a small place, right?—so that I can survive.” And the angel said to him, “All right, I will do what you are askingabout this too and will not destroy the town you are talking about.Hurry up! Run to it—I can’t do anything here until you get there.” Therefore, the name of the city is Zoar. The sun had risen over the land when Lot finally reached Zoar. Then, from out of the sky, the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah burning sulfur from the Lord. He destroyed the cities, all the flat land around the cities, all the people who lived in the cities, and even everything that was growing on the ground. But Lot’s wife looked back and became a pillar of salt. Early in the morning, Abraham went to the same place where he had stood before the Lord and talked to Him. Abraham looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and all the land of the plain around the cities, and he saw that smoke was going up from the land just like the smoke of a furnace. When God destroyed the cities of the plain, it was because he remembered Abraham that He brought Lot out of the middle of danger when he destroyed the cities where Lot had lived.
Wow, what a terrible ending to the story of Sodom. And all the other cities nearby, which were evidently just as bad. What a terrible, dangerous, and cruel place to live. How horrible that people couldn’t even travel through the area safely. It’s really scary thinking about such a place where absolutely everyone felt like hurting strangers was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. I once lived in a town in Missouri that was called a “Sundown town” which means a town where it isn’t totally safe to be in at night if you aren’t white. I didn’t know that when I lived there but I wasn’t shocked when I found out. So, they weren’t as bad as Sodom but they weren’t good either. It’s sad that we still have places like Sodom here in my country, America, where some people aren’t safe. Of course, someone could stay at my house and they wouldn’t get hurt but we would have had to be careful if we went out.
I just read a lot of verses, but I want to start this week out at the very end of these verses because we find out for sure why God saved Lot and it wasn’t because Lot was an amazingly right or good guy—it was because God loved Lot’s uncle Abraham. In fact, this is the second time that Lot has only been saved for the sake of God’s promises to Abraham. God is really generous like that with people whom He loves—going easier on their family members just because He is so loyal. In fact, we’re going to see this happen all the way through the Bible. No matter how badly Abraham’s kids and grandkids all the way to Jesus and beyond mess things up, God always remembers His promises to Abraham. And even more than that, more than God ever loved Abraham, is God’s love for His Son Jesus. And the way Abraham prayed for people to save them, Jesus prays for us too. Can you imagine God saying no to His Son Jesus? I can’t! In fact—the Bible says that we are Abraham’s children if we are loyal to Jesus as our King and Savior. We don’t have to be born Jewish to be Abraham’s children, or even to become Jewish.
Jesus is Jewish, with a Jewish mom and all His ancestors were Jewish and He lived a Jewish life, and we follow Jesus so the whole Bible belongs to us as God’s Word and God’s instructions but God wants all people of the world to become children of Abraham—people of every color, on every continent, in every country, and who speak every single language. God wants all of us and gave us the job of telling people about Him so that His Kingdom can take over the entire planet and everyone in it. He wants everyone to be children of Abraham, because Abraham’s children are God’s children too. And God is loyal to us even when we are acting like goober heads, because of Jesus and because that’s just the way He has always been and always will be. Although, part of loyalty and love means that He is also very serious about getting us to be the kinds of people who will do what is right and fair. When we aren’t cooperating, sometimes He has to put us on a time out or maybe we get grounded. That isn’t fun but He loves us so He can’t just let us keep doing wrong, right? We want to be like Jesus! The whole world needs us to be like Jesus. And because Jesus is exactly like God, we know how loyal and good God is. So, when you grow up, make sure you know exactly what the Bible says about Jesus and make sure the people teaching you about Him are pointing you in the right direction. Lot hasn’t got God’s love and character figured out, because if he did he would have left that city right away and trusted God that he could make it into the mountains with his family like the angels told him to. God doesn’t tell us to do impossible things, right? That would just be mean. That would be like one of my cats playing with a mouse just for the fun of it, knowing that they probably can’t really get away. I am so grateful our God isn’t like that. That’s what the false gods were like with Israel’s neighbors in the Bible.
Now, let’s pick back up where we left off last week with the angels having to force Lot and his wife and two daughters out of the city—because even though they knew it was going to be destroyed, Lot wasn’t willing to leave. If angels came to you and told you that the city you were living in was going to be destroyed, would you say, “Nah, I’m good. I’d rather watch television.”? Of course not. At least I hope not! The way Lot behaves all the way through his story just rarely makes any kind of good sense and he gets himself into more and more trouble by making foolish, greedy, prideful, and selfish decisions. We need to remember that in chapter 13, Abraham had to send Lot away because they had too many critters and their people were fighting with each other. But when I see Lot and all the nonsense he gets himself into, sometimes I wonder if Abraham was wanting to get rid of Lot for other reasons too. We just don’t know for sure, but we do know that it just wasn’t working out. Sending away your only family in a strange new land wasn’t something anyone would do without it being really important. And even outside the city, when the angels told them to run for the mountains, Lot said he couldn’t do it and tried to get them to leave one of the wicked cities alone. So, instead of escaping to the mountains, away from the evil people and closer to his uncle Abraham, Lot is willing to go to a smaller wicked city and be there instead. And the angels actually agreed not to destroy one of the cities. Can you believe how patient they are being? This is all about how loyal and loving God is to Abraham. I would be like booking it all the way over to my uncle for sure—like, hours before and especially after I found out that my neighbors wanted to kill me or worse. He had no reason in the world to even want to stay—but he was staying. He complains that he doesn’t have enough time to escape, but isn’t even willing to try until the angels force them out. It’s like someone not being willing to get out of bed in the morning and then loudly complaining that they are going to be late for school or work or whatever. Seems like Lot really wants to just have it easy.
The angels even say that they can’t even do anything to Sodom and the other cities until Lot gets to the tiny city of Zoar, so Lot had no reason to worry about not making it all the way to safety in the mountains. And Moses tells us that this is why the city is called Zoar—but what does that even mean? Well, Zoar sounds like one of the Hebrew words meaning small—if you remember from the war of the four kings vs the five kings, this town used to be called Bela and the nickname Moses gave the king of Bela was “nobody.” That’s how small Bela was—and why it was later called Zoar. There are a lot of times in the Bible that something or someone gets a new name because of something that happened. Sometimes, in the ancient world, to get rid of someone’s name entirely, they call them something else–something insulting. And sometimes God gives them a new name or gives a place a new name for good reasons. In Revelation 2:17, at the very end of our Bibles, Jesus tells us that we will be given new names if we are faithful to Him—names that are just between Jesus and us. That’s pretty special! Have you ever wondered what special name Jesus calls you when He is talking to His Father? I bet it’s a good one but we won’t ever know until we see Him. That’s an exciting thing to be waiting for. God knows you by name—not only by the name your parents gave you but by the name He gave you. And only He has to know how to say it, so it can be absolutely anything in any language or even in a language we’ve never heard. But when He calls you by it, you are going to know it’s for you!
So, they finally go and it isn’t until well into the morning that at least Lot and his daughters arrive in Zoar, that small, evil little town. But wait, there were four of them when they left Sodom, what happened to Lot’s wife? Well, this is one of those things where the Bible doesn’t say much but people make up a whole lot of stories about it anyway and a lot of us just read those stories into the Bible like they are obviously there. Lot’s wife, at some point, turned around. We don’t know exactly when. Was it when they were on their way before the bad stuff happened? Was it once they got to Zoar and they began to hear the terrible sounds of those four cities being destroyed? We don’t know for sure but a lot of folks will give you their opinion. Here is my very silly “what if” story about it that can’t possibly be true but I am going to tell it to you anyway so that hopefully you will remember that the Bible doesn’t really tell us anything here about when or why she turned around but only that she did.
When Lot and his family got to the city, they were out of breath and thirsty and hungry. They were just inside the gate, panting and resting when they heard a loud noise. It sounded like a heavy rain behind them—a very heavy rain but the smell was horrible like rotten eggs. Lot’s wife got out her cell phone and said, “Wait a minute, I need to take a selfie of me with whatever is happening back home so I can post it on TikTok and my Instagram account.” After taking the picture, she said, “Okay, one more, I need one without my head in the picture.” Okay, so that definitely didn’t happen—I guarantee it—but it’s funny. Kinda. Not really. This story is too terrible to be funny. And then she turned into a pillar of salt—which we also don’t know anything about. Did it look like her or was it just a tall pile of salt? Again, we just have no idea. It isn’t really important. I guess the important part of the story is that when God tells you to run from a place that is about to be destroyed, don’t look back or go back—at all.
Jesus once asked a man to be one of His disciples, and they said they wanted to but they had one big problem—they had to bury their father first. Now, that might not seem to be a big deal to us because when someone we love dies, they are usually buried right away and stay buried. But during the time of Jesus, a person would be wrapped in cloth and spices and put in a sealed cave for a year until only their bones were left over. And then the family would go back, especially the oldest son, and they would take the bones and place them in a carved rock box and bury them in the cave again. Until then, they weren’t really buried even though they were rotting. So, this young man was telling Jesus that he really wanted to follow Him and learn from Him like a student with a Rabbi but first he had to take care of his father’s bones. It wasn’t a bad thing but it might be as much as a year away. He was saying that he’d love to follow Jesus, if only he didn’t have more important things to do. Jesus didn’t give up on him though, He said, “Let the people who are dead bury the people who are dead but I want you to come with me to preach about the Kingdom of God.” We don’t actually know what happened with this man—if he went back home or if he went with Jesus. But Jesus was telling him that there are always going to be people available to take care of the normal stuff of life, but when God invites you to preach about His Kingdom, you need to drop everything and go just like Peter, Andrew, James, John and the others did. God isn’t going to tell people to go when their real important work is at home. When my son was little, he had to go to the hospital a lot, and God didn’t ask me to preach about Jesus and His Kingdom until all that was over. Taking care of my sons was how I was serving God until they became more independent. I taught them about the Kingdom of God. Even just teaching one person is a big deal when God tells you to do it.
There was another man who said he would follow Jesus but first he had to go home and say goodbye. Jesus told him that turning around to go home instead of doing God’s work was a mistake and that they were going in the wrong direction. It wasn’t that Jesus didn’t love the first guy’s father or the second guy’s family—it was just that when we turn back around when God gives us a job, it means we can easily be talked out of it and convinced to stay. And that happens a lot. Serving God full time isn’t an easy life and there will always be reasons to stop. Families mostly stuck together during those days and there was no post office or phones or anything like that. Leaving home meant they never knew if they would see you again and that would be scary. My kid just moved to the other side of town and I was really messed up about it for about ten days and all I did was clean the house and rearrange it to keep myself busy. But we text and call each other and he comes over every Friday night for dinner and sometimes during the week. If he came home and suddenly told me he was leaving for somewhere without phones and I might never hear from him again, believe me, I would be freaking out. He might not want to leave because I would be so upset. It wouldn’t be wrong for me to be sad, but I would be thinking about myself and how I want him to stay with me. So, hopefully he wouldn’t turn back and give me a chance to talk him out of it. I mean, he shouldn’t leave without saying something but he would need to be very certain before he even told me about it!
When Jesus told the second man who wanted to go home first that anyone who started working and then turned around and went home wasn’t going to be able to cut it as part of His Kingdom, He was warning that guy that it wouldn’t be easy to follow God—not that He hated him or that he was going to hell or anything. Serving God as any kind of minister is a difficult way of life but when God calls us, it is also a wonderful way to live. It isn’t so different than when God called Lot and his family to leave their home in Sodom and to go to the mountains. And when Lot complained, God allowed them to go to Zoar instead. But for some reason—either in the city of Zoar or on the way there, Lot’s wife turned back even if it was only with her eyes. The angels told them all not to look back, but she did anyway. We have no idea why. But God was saving her and her family and didn’t ask much in return—just run and don’t stop or look back. In the Bible, sometimes it’s the easy things that trip people up the most even when they rush out to go and do the hard things God asks. There is nothing hard about running away from a city that is about to be destroyed, right? Because if you don’t, you’re going to die. This shouldn’t be a hard decision to make. And no one should really want to see four cities being destroyed with burning sulfur. It’s bad enough that it had to happen, and even worse to see. Even when people are evil, there isn’t anything good about watching them die.
Later that morning, Abraham went out to the place where He had been talking with God and He saw the smoke—thick smoke like would come out of a furnace. Science time here—the cities were all places where the asphalt miners lived and there were pits all through that area with asphalt. Asphalt won’t catch fire until it’s about 450 degrees F. That’s why the roads don’t burn up when there is a forest fire. But Sulfur, which is what was falling on Sodom, melts when it is about 450 degrees F. And this sulfur was burning so it would be even hotter than 450. So, sulfur that was actually on fire would catch the asphalt on fire and it was all over that area. The cities would have probably all exploded or something like that. The asphalt was in pits all over the plain and so if they had stopped, they would have been hurt too, even if they were far from the cities. Archaeologists have been digging up old cities from around that region and in some of them, every single room of every single building is full of ashes from a fire. Wow.
So, when the Bible talks about the smoke being like you would see coming out of a furnace, it isn’t talking about the electric or gas furnace in your home where, if there is smoke, you had better turn it off and fast. It’s talking about the kinds of furnaces they would use to melt metal, which were hot with thick black greasy-looking smoke. You would be able to see it from a very long way off. And we don’t know if Abraham ever found out if Lot survived or not. Lot is about to disappear from the Bible and as a matter of fact, we’re just going to visit one more verse about him before going on to the next chapter of the Bible:
Lot left the small city of Zoar and lived in the mountains along with his two daughters, because he was afraid to live in Zoar. Instead, he and his two daughters lived in a cave.
Wow, that’s awful. Why was he afraid to live in Zoar? Is it because Zoar was just as evil as Sodom and Lot didn’t trust God to save him again? Were the people of Zoar suspicious and wondering if Lot was responsible for what happened? Maybe they thought he was cursed. Did the people of Zoar try to treat Lot the way the men of Sodom wanted to treat the mysterious visitors? We don’t know. Maybe it was because, for once, Lot figured out that he shouldn’t live in evil towns but what we don’t know is why he didn’t go to his uncle Abraham. This is a big mystery, but we do know that Lot was a man who had everything but didn’t know how to make wise decisions for himself or for his family. I guess that’s why we find so many “what if” stories about him—because Lot and his antics are too confusing to understand for sure. Living in a cave definitely wasn’t the best way to go.
I love you. I am praying for you. Abraham isn’t perfect, but compared to Lot he looks like the wisest and most faithful person on earth. We can learn a lot from the bad decisions Lot made—that’s why he is included in the stories about God and Abraham. To show how kind God is even when people just can’t seem to get their lives figured out.