Righteous Lot

Have you heard the story of Lot and his family? Would you characterize his lifestyle as righteous? That's exactly what Peter says about him. It’s also recorded in some of the intertestamental books. If you haven’t heard of Lot or his story let me tell you a little bit about him. He first starts off by going east of where Abraham was. In theological terms east oftentimes means moving further from God. It is a departure from the garden where man formally walked with God. Second, Lot offers up his daughters to the city. That's pretty tough. And then finally, Lot gets drunk and has illicit relations with his daughters. Now to me, this doesn’t sound much like a righteous man. It sounds like he’s depicted as a pretty immoral dude. Why then do Peter and others call him righteous?

What do you want written about you in your obituary when you die? The words that will be spoken in that, is kind of like the sum of your life. For Lot, even though we only see a bit of it, his obituary or the sum of his life was that he was found righteous. At the end of his days men looking back on his life and Lot’s legacy was that he was righteous. I think this has to do with his trust in God for escaping the city. He complained but then obediently did what he was told. We see the opposite in his wife. She looked back and was destroyed.

What’s your life look like now? Are you living far from God in your actions? Are you walking in a lifestyle that doesn’t represent the greatness of God’s love, grace, and mercy? There is still time to be called righteous if you turn and trust in Jesus with your life. May it be said of us at the end of our days (despite how we are living now) that we were righteous. A righteousness that is not by our own merit, but a righteousness that was bestowed on us by God and was displayed in the way we bore his name on this earth. Man, Lot did some crazy stuff, but in the end, Lot was called righteous. What will you be called?