Luke 17 verses 28 & 29. “It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulphur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all.”
Jesus uses a second analogy to describe what it will be like when the Kingdom arrives visibly, and that is the reference to the days of Lot (verses 28-29).
Many will remember the Old Testament accounts of Lot choosing to settle near the wicked city of Sodom and there to raise his family with its near disastrous consequences (Generis 19). According to 2 Peter 2 verses 6-9, Lot also bore some sort of witness to the wicked city, but to no avail. They may well have mocked the testimony of Lot, but imagine their great shock when suddenly God’s judgement fell on the city.
Jesus said “it would be just like this on the day the Son of Man is revealed” (v 30). The next verse enlarges the urgency of the day. Do not collect your goods, flee, flee, flee. Can you sense the urgency? Such is the urgency of the Gospel message. It is good news indeed. But it is also urgent news and needs to be heeded by all.
Both Noah’s contemporaries and the Sodomites of Lot’s day were particularly evil people, but the emphasis our Lord puts upon them in this passage is not upon the great sins and indulgences of which they were guilty, rather it was their preoccupation with all of life’s normal activities. In some ways there is nothing wrong with that, but it was the total exclusion of God from their lives that is highlighted by our Lord’s words. In fact, while Sodom was burning behind her, Lot’s wife still looked back longingly to the life she had left behind. Such is the human heart, that it can see past the very judgement of God to long after life’s trivialities. Verse 31 bluntly says “Remember Lot’s wife”. Compare that with Generis 19 v 26.
This is a great reminder to us not to become so caught up with family, possessions and lifestyles that we forget God. All things will pass away and we should all remember our individual accountability to Almighty God. Hence our faith in Jesus Christ as Lord of our lives and Lord over all things. In our lives, should be borne in mind by all disciples.