He magnanimously gives Lot the choice of choosing the land that he wanted for his herds and flocks. Notice carefully what God records about Lot.
What is the least important aspect of seeing the faith? Eyesight. What is God beginning to tell us here? He is beginning to tell us that Lot lived by sight, not by faith. And even though God saved him, the man was what we would call today "carnal." Converted, but carnal. Just like Paul called the Corinthians in I Corinthians 3, he told them, "You are yet carnal." These were converted people. That is the way Lot was. So Lot lifted up his eyes, he saw the beauty of the land, saw that it would produce wealth, and he chose to ignore the evil that was plainly visible to anyone who cared to look at it.
We have moved one chapter. He is no longer outside the city; he is now living in the city and chapter 19 confirms that he was living in the city whenever the angels showed up. Step by step. Abram lived his godly life and God chose him, separating himself from the people of the land. Lot lives his life by faith, and even though he is converted, even though he knows the work of God, he chooses to mix himself in with the people of the land, and we see him sucked right into the midst of it. Now maybe he never intended when he made that choice—“Well, we can live there but we won't live in the city. We'll be in the outskirts and we'll kind of live the kind of life that we live out there,” but he ended up in the city. So he did not do it right away.
What we are seeing here is the contrast to Moses. Moses deliberately chose to turn his back on the world. Lot deliberately chose to go toward the world and what occurred then was the association wore down his spirituality, wore down his resistance until his true spirituality was such that he did not really know much of the difference between right and wrong any longer. He really did not know what he wanted. He lingered in the city while it was getting ready to be destroyed. There is no surer way to go backward in one's spirituality, to blunt your feelings and knowledge of sin, to dull your spiritual discernment, than by mingling with the world. That's the lesson.
Ten years before the events of Genesis 15, Abram at 76 submitted himself to God’s judgment for the sake of peace, and let Lot choose what physically looked to be the best territory. On Lot’s part, here is another decision driven by the mind of men based on what is seen that did not work out very well either.
Now with this let us get back to Abraham. In chapter 13 we saw Abram taking a step in faith of self-sacrifice for the sake of peace, while literally putting his own destiny into God’s hands when separating from Lot. And within God’s favor he ended up in the Land of Promise and his own home base of operation for the rest of his life, “by the Terebinth trees of Mamre, which are in Hebron,” as we read in Genesis 13:18. This was 23 years before the events of Genesis 18 and his interaction with the Lord and two angels, and the first time the English word for favor is used in the Bible.
Over this 23-year period of time we see he had been growing in grace and knowledge, while maintaining His humble attitude. He was actively involved in a relationship with God, who was showing His friend that his own solutions to problems were not the answer. He was continuing to earn God’s favor through humble submission and trembling at God’s Word—building layers of mutual trust as he was trusting the Lord with all his heart and not leaning on his own understanding of things, just as it says there in Proverbs 3.
