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.
At least you have to say for what the Bible says about Lot that he was troubled, vexed, tormented, tortured by what was going on around him, even though he chose unwisely, foolishly to live within it. So Lot appears to have had a measure of faith, but his approach to living was quite a bit different from Abraham's.
So Lot left Egypt, but apparently Egypt never left Lot. It shows he was an upright man, a good man. He was a great deal like the Israelites who came out of Egypt. The fact that he chose to go in that direction toward Sodom and Gomorrah rather than resolving the problem that arose between his herdsmen and the herdsmen of Abraham, and instead choosing the ground that was like Egypt, or rather than return to Abraham and allowing him to make the choice, shows us a very great deal about Lot and his approach to life.
Does it not appear to you that he was a man of some faith, and at least intellectually, he wanted to follow the ways of God, but he wanted to do it with one foot in the world. He was not like Abraham. He consciously chose to separate himself from within the context of what was being worked out at that time.
Things today are a little bit different than they were in Abraham’s day, that is, what God is working out. God is teaching us something here. The man of true faith separates himself as far as he can possibly get from the world. The person whose faith is weak, though he does have some faith, gets as close to the edge of the cliff as he possibly can get, but still tries to somehow keep God [unclear]. Now Lot seems to have compensated and in some way justified what he was doing in Sodom by preaching to these people and scolding them for their sins. But he never entirely broke away from that way of life himself.
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.
Abram was a man of faith. He was content to appear weak in the mountains with God, rather than appear strong without Him down in the strongholds of evil there in Sodom. He chose a more lonely path, but he certainly chose a better path.
Now if we would go back through those verses again, we would find that Lot saw, Lot chose, Lot journeyed, Lot took up residence. By sight, by self-will, he makes his home back in the evil unclean world.
Then Lot leaves, and then the Lord appears and He commands Abram to do the same things that Lot did in verse 10. He said, “Lift up your eyes.”
