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I finished the last episode by mentioning how I would like to say something about the location of these events. I find this most interesting there is in the Holy Land something called the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea can be divided into 2 parts it has a northern part, and a southern part. The northern part today is very deep in some places it's 1400 feet deep the southern part of the Dead Sea is about 10 miles long and is only about 10 to 20 feet deep. There are archaeologists that believe that the southern part of what is now the Dead Sea is the site and location of the four cities that got destroyed. As a matter of fact archaeologists have discovered five large cities on the eastern side of the southern portion of the Dead Sea and some are suggesting these are the destroyed cities of this chapter. I just think all of that is really fascinating, because brimstone is associated with sulphur, because until this very day the Dead Sea smells like sulphur. Many think this may be a indications of the whereabouts of the cities that were destroyed in this narrative. Lot was located there, and Lot was a businessman and probably a leader in the community that all went up in smoke.

The Apostle Peter in 2 Peter 2 cited Lot as an example of the Lords deliverance of the his own from trials that he uses to punish the ungodly. But this story also shows that one of the dangers of living for the world is that you can lose everything you worked for. Look at what happens next.

But Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.

(Gen. 19: 26)

Do you remember one of the instructions of the Angels was to, “leave and don't look back” and yet Lot’s wife she looked back. Bible experts say the words used in that little phrase “looked back” suggests that she was looking longingly at what she was leaving behind. Her heart was still inclined towards Sodom, and she became a pillar of salt. Some have suggested if she had been overcome by the fiery destruction rained down from heaven what would have been left would have been salt encrusted vapours of the salt sea so that she would have been looked like a pillar of salt now, a bit like those encrusted bodies we can see at Vesuvius in Italy today. We know she lagged behind, and we can also know that her look back was not out of curiosity or pity for her friends. It was more likely a look back in sorrow for all she was leaving behind. She lost her physical life because her heart was still in the city.

Lot and his wife were both worldly they lived in Sodom and lot's wife looked longingly to return to the city that was about to be destroyed and as a result, she lost her life.

“Early the next morning Abraham got up and returned to the place where he had stood before the Lord. He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, toward all the land of the plain, and he saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace. So, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, he remembered Abraham, and he brought Lot out of the catastrophe that overthrew the cities where Lot had lived.

(Gen 19: 27-29)

That’s the danger of living in the world, you could lose everything including your life. The danger of living in the world is that the world gets inside of you. The problem was not that they were in Sodom, but problem is that Sodom was in them. James in his NT letter talks about it as being conformed to those elements of the world by leaving God out of the everyday. As believers the promise of the Bible is that God won't judge us like he judges the world, but God will sometime discipline us.

I wish that were the end of the story but for Lot and his family things will degenerate further. It degenerates into unimaginable sin. I’ll tell you more about that in the next episode.