Escape

“Remember Lot’s wife.  Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it.” Luke 17:32-33

A lot of the sins we fall into lure us with a false sense of escape.  Escape from hardship, escape from the mundane, escape from responsibility, escape from suffering, escape from work, escape from reality.  We turn to entertainment, alcohol, drugs, the internet, our phones, any one of the world of idols we have at our fingertips that promise a break from a hard day.  While we are squandering our time on these things, God promises the true rest and escape our weary souls yearn for.

In Genesis chapter 19 we read the story of Lot’s rescue from Sodom.

“As morning dawned, the angels urged Lot says, “Up!  Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be swept away in the punishment of the city.”  But he lingered.  So the men seized him and his wife and his two daughters by the hand, the Lord being merciful to him, and they brought him out and set him outside the city.” Genesis 19:15-16

But he lingered.  What sin is God trying to pull you out of that you are continuing to dabble in, preferring the comfort that you find in it to the freedom Jesus bought for you?  How often do I say in my heart “tomorrow”, or “one last time”, or “it’s fine, God understands, I’m forgiven”?  I linger with my idols, finding escape in the very things I should be fleeing. 

“And as they brought them out, one said, ‘Escape for your life.  Do not look back or stop anywhere in the valley.  Escape to the hills, lest you be swept away.” Genesis 19:17

“But Lot’s wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.” Genesis 19:26

Lot’s wife looked back.  She was pulled out by the hand by two angels sent by God, she saw the destruction and death that came from sin, yet she still longed for that life.  She longed for what was behind rather than what was ahead.  She bought the lie that the temporal, fleeting pleasures of our flesh can surpass the joy that is set before us in Christ.  How often am I tempted to look back at my life before Christ?  To long for the days of ignorance, where I was unaware of the daily battle against sin because I wasn’t fighting it?  How much easier was it to just given in?  But these are all lies!  “I have been crucified with Christ.  It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.  And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Galatians 2:20.   That life is gone now, I have been rescued from it by God’s grace, as he provided the great escape for my soul on the cross.  That is our escape, ladies, from all of the trials, the suffering, the hardships, and the snares of this world.  Our escape is the cross.  Our escape is our savior.  Run to him.