Steps

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment; if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; and if he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked (for as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard); then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority.
2 Peter 2:4-10

God will punish those who deny Him His rightful place. Lot lived in a situation that bothered him, yet he chose to live that way. The world he lived in eventually took a toll on him, his wife, and his daughters. He must have believed in friendship evangelism because he made many friends in Sodom, even though their ways distressed him. He even had his daughters involved with men from the town, immoral men, as we know, since there could not be five righteous people in the city.

When Lot spoke of God, he was mocked. This meant that his friendship evangelism was more like friendship-making without evangelism. The norm of Sodom must have crept into his life and family, and now was the norm for Lot.
This last mention of him gives us insight into the troubled mind and uneasy spirit he must have had. It may be like those who claim to be Christians today who live for themselves in this typically narcissistic culture and see the problems, but continue to live within them, rather than address them.

Lot probably felt that if he spoke up and took a stand, they would mock him or chase him out of town (and they would have in that city), so he probably thought that rather than abandon a Godly influence, he would make no Godly influence. Thereby, he abandoned his only fundamental role of showing the world who God is for one of silence and apparent submission. He hid his light under a bushel. He was salt that had lost its savor. He was the city on the hill, hidden at night.
I wonder how many righteous are left in America? I wonder how many steps in Lot's life I have already embraced?

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