(Luke 17:32)  “Remember Lot’s wife.”

In the previous verses of Luke 17, Jesus was speaking to the disciples concerning the Kingdom of God and signs of His second coming. Jesus used the days of Noah as His first example of revealing the condition of people at His Second Coming. In the next example, Jesus used Lot and events surrounding him at the judgment of Sodom. Christ focused on Lot’s wife to teach the disciples a vital lesson: “Remember Lot’s Wife” (Luke 17:32). Christ directed the attention of His disciples to the account of the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah by God as recorded in (Gen. 18:16-19; 19:1-28) to teach the value of the righteous not looking back, as Lot’s wife did.

There lived in Sodom a righteous man by the name of Lot (2 Peter 2:6-8), who lived with his family whom the Lord delivered (Lot, his wife, and only two of his daughters) out of Sodom before His coming judgment. The angels had to take Lot, his wife, and two daughters’ hands and rush them out, because they were taking their time in leaving. After getting them out of the city, the angel gave specific instructions to them: “escape for thy life; look not behind thee” (Genesis 19:17). However, in Genesis 19:26, it is written that Lot’s wife did look back: “But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.”

What was her reason for looking back? Was it because she wanted to see the fate of these two ungodly cities? Or, maybe it was because she thought about a family heirloom she had left behind that had been in her family for years. Or, could it be her heart was in Sodom, where two of her married daughters stayed? Whatever her reason was – she did not follow her instructions, which were to: “look not behind thee”

The child of God has no reason to look back except for the benefit of seeing where the Lord has brought him from, to help him in the present and in the future; and to use the past as a testimony of God’s deliverance, when witnessing to others. It is of great importance with whom, or with what, the child of God has fellowship with; for the child of God cannot be in fellowship with the world and not be affected in a negative way. The child of God is instructed in (2Co 6:14,) “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?”

A prime example of why the Word of God gives these instructions is found in Num. 11:4-5:

“And the mixt multitude (people that lived by the leadership of the flesh) that was among them fell a lusting: and the children of Israel also wept again, and said, Who shall give us flesh to eat?  (5) We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick:”

Here you can see the effect the mixt multitude had on the Israelites: they caused the Israelites to complain and look back to Egypt. It is so easy to remember the good, but, what Israel failed to realize is that these things came with a great price. They were in bondage in Egypt under the rule of a hard taskmaster. When the child of God begins to look back and reflect on the so called “good times”; or listens to the “mix multitude”; the child of God needs to remember that it came with a great price under a hard taskmaster, even the devil. Israel had forgotten all their days of hard labor and mistreatment when they enjoyed the fish, garlic, cumbers, leeks and melons in the land of bondage (Egypt).

Child of God when you do look back or reflect over your past; don’t forget about those nights that you wept praying to be delivered from drug addition, alcoholism and abusive relationships, etc. Don’t ever forget where and what God has brought from and delivered you from. Don’t look back; (Luke 9:62)  “And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”