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I. WITH REGARD TO HER SIN, the state of mind discovered, and the aggravations with which it was attended. Thus, we cannot fail to see in it a low and debased degree of earthly-mindedness, a heart fixed and bent on getting its worldly stuff — ready to incur difficulty for it, danger for it — ay, and the anger of God for it. In this particular connection, the warning of her example seems to be proposed in the text. In that day, when the signs of an advent Saviour are upon you, be not anxious about your worldly possessions. Let the things that are in the house remain in the house, the things that are left in the field be left in the field. "Remember Lot's wife." Again, there was in this sin of Lot's wife the crime of disobedience, with all its actual accompaniments of defiant rebellion and contemptuous unbelief. She had been especially charged that she must not look back, and she did look back; she had been told she must escape for her life, and she loitered even behind her husband. See how many things meet here — the authority of God is spurned, the word of the angel is disbelieved, the wisdom or necessity of the command is questioned, and the impious prerogative laid claim to "Our eyes are our own; we may look on what we will: who is Lord over us?" Now it is easy to see what gives to those offences against a positive precept their character of deep offending. In the case of offences against the principle or spirit of a law, a treacherous and facile conscience will raise a cavil, and even make for itself excuse to the conscience, as not able to do this, when command takes the form of "Do this" or "Refrain from that." We are then made to feel that we are brought face to face with God; we are confronted with the broad, plain letter of His written law. Room for mistake or cavil or misinterpretation, there is none; we must offend with our eyes open, and cast ourselves headlong into the depths of presumptuous sin. But once more, there was in the sin of the woman much of deep and signal ingratitude. Her life had been one of marked and distinguishing mercies. Solemn warding this, to all of us who have been brought up religiously; for those who have in early life enjoyed great spiritual opportunities: it seems that when such people fall, none fall so low; the light that was in them becomes darkness, and, as our Lord teaches, there is no darkness so thick as that. It is like being borne away to perdition on the wings of God's mercy.

II. On the AWFUL PUNISHMENT with which the wife of Lot was visited I will only insist as showing how peculiarly aggravated in God's sight must have been the nature of her sin. Her end was marked by all those circumstances of anger and terror which seem to foreclose all hope. First, it was that which we pray against in our Litany as sudden death; that is, not sudden in the sense of being wholly unlooked-for — that may be a great blessing — but sudden as unprepared-for — sudden, as finding us with nothing ready for our meeting with God, with our hearts yet in the world, and our faces turned that way.

III. Now to gather up a few PRACTICAL LESSONS from our subject.

1. "Remember Lot's wife" as an example of the folly, the danger, the wickedness of trifling with what you know to be wrong, of committing little sins, breaking little precepts, and going on to Satan's ground only a very little way. All little sins, all slight tamperings with conscience, all partial returns to once forsaken evil, all compromises with a renounced and repented habit, are as first steps to a hopeless and disastrous fall. Like Lot's wife, we may only intend to look and look, and then turn back again. Rut we find we cannot turn back; the witchcraft of an evil nature is at work within us; we have seven wicked spirits to contend with now, where, before, we had but one, and so by little and little we are led within the charmed circle of evil till there is no going back and no escaping.

2. "Remember Lot's wife" as an example of the possibility of falling from the most hopeful spiritual condition. How confidently should we have argued of her state; how confidently might she have argued of her own, when, of four persons to be saved out of those vast populations, she was chosen as one.

3. "Remember Lot's wife" as a warning to us that there must be no delays, no haltings, no slackened diligence, in running the race that is set before us. "Escape for thy life" — life spiritual, life temporal, life eternal — lose one and you lose all; and you may lose all by becoming weary and faint in the running.

(D. Moore, M. A.)

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KJV: Remember Lot's wife.

WEB: Remember Lot's wife!