The Covenantal Escape Hatch: For Abraham's Sake Text: Genesis 19:29
Introduction: The Folly of Individualism
We live in an age that worships at the altar of the autonomous individual. The modern man, particularly the modern Western man, believes he is a self-contained unit. His triumphs are his own, his failures are his own, and his destiny is a thing he forges for himself. He is the captain of his soul, the master of his fate, and he will answer to no one. This is the central lie of our rebellious age, and it is a lie that makes it impossible for most to understand the first thing about how God governs the world He made.
Our God is not the god of disconnected individuals. He is a covenantal God. He deals with mankind in covenantal structures, through representative heads. This is the grammar of Scripture, from the first Adam, in whom we all fell, to the last Adam, in whom all His people are made alive. If you do not grasp the principle of federal headship, the Bible will be a locked book to you. You will misread everything. You will think salvation is about you being a good enough person for God to notice, and you will think judgment is something that only happens to other, really bad people.
The story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is a terrifying display of God's holy justice against high-handed, corporate rebellion. It is fire and brimstone from a clear blue sky. But tucked into this account of cataclysmic judgment is a verse that explains the deliverance of the one righteous man who lived there, Lot. And if we read it with our modern, individualistic spectacles, we will get it entirely backward. We will think, "Of course God saved Lot. He was the good guy." But the text does not say that. The text points us in an entirely different direction. It tells us that when the world was burning, God was not thinking about Lot. He was thinking about Abraham.
This verse is a beautiful illustration of the engine that drives our salvation. It is a story about how God's faithfulness to one man results in the deliverance of another. It is a story about borrowed righteousness and covenantal grace. It is, in short, a picture of the gospel.
The Text
"Thus it happened, when God destroyed the cities of the valley, that God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when He overthrew the cities in which Lot lived."
(Genesis 19:29 LSB)
The Context of Holy Judgment
The first part of our text sets the scene:
"Thus it happened, when God destroyed the cities of the valley..."
We must not rush past this. The judgment that fell on Sodom and Gomorrah was not a natural disaster. It was not a tragic meteor shower. The text is plain: God destroyed them. The Lord rained fire and sulfur "from the LORD out of heaven" (v. 24). This was a personal, holy, and violent act of retributive justice. The sins of these cities had reached a terminal stage. Their pride, their abundance, their idleness, and their haughty abominations had come up before the Lord (Ezek. 16:49-50). Their culture had become a cancerous growth on God's good earth, and the divine surgeon excised it with fire.
We live in a sentimental age that cannot stomach such a God. Our culture wants a God who is a celestial guidance counselor, a divine affirmation machine. But the God of the Bible is the Judge of all the earth, and He will do right. And doing right sometimes means the utter overthrow of those who are implacably set in their rebellion. This is not a bug; it is a feature of His holiness. A god who will not judge evil is not a good god; he is a co-conspirator. The destruction of the cities of the plain is a permanent warning sign, a historical monument to the fact that there is a limit to divine patience. God's mercy is oceanic, but it is not infinite for those who despise it.
The Engine of Deliverance
Now we come to the heart of the matter. In the midst of this righteous inferno, how does the one man who fears God get out? The reason given is not what we would expect.
"...that God remembered Abraham..."
This is the hinge upon which the entire event turns for Lot. God saved Lot because God remembered Abraham. This word "remembered" in Hebrew, zakar, is not a word about cognitive recall, as though the thought of Abraham had slipped God's mind. In Scripture, when God "remembers," it is a covenantal term. It means He is now acting on the basis of a promise He has made. He is calling to mind His covenant oath and moving in history to fulfill it. God remembered His covenant with Noah, and the floodwaters receded (Gen. 8:1). God remembered Rachel, and He opened her womb (Gen. 30:22). God heard the groaning of Israel in Egypt and remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and He acted to deliver them (Ex. 2:24).
God had made a covenant with Abraham. He had promised to bless him, to make his name great, and to make him a blessing. Lot was Abraham's kinsman. He was part of Abraham's household, under his covenantal headship. When Abraham had interceded for Sodom, he was not just haggling with God; he was standing in the gap as a federal head, pleading on behalf of his sphere of responsibility. And though there were not ten righteous in the city, God honored the standing of the man with whom He had made the covenant. Lot's deliverance was a covenantal mercy, an overflow of the grace that rested upon Abraham.
Lot himself was, to put it mildly, a compromised man. The New Testament calls him righteous, and tells us his soul was vexed by the lawless deeds he saw (2 Pet. 2:7-8). And yet, he was sitting in the gate of Sodom, a place of civic leadership. He was trying to marry his daughters off to Sodomites. When the angels told him to flee, he lingered. He hesitated. He had to be physically dragged out of the city by the hand. Lot was saved, but as one escaping through the flames, smelling of smoke. His own righteousness was flimsy, tattered, and shot through with compromise. His salvation did not depend on the strength of his own character, but on the strength of God's covenant with his uncle.
The Great Escape
The result of God's covenant remembrance is Lot's physical salvation.
"...and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when He overthrew the cities in which Lot lived."
God did not just remember Abraham and then leave Lot to his own devices. God's remembrance is always active. He "sent Lot out." This was a divine extraction. It was a sovereign act of rescue. Lot was not saved because he was a savvy prepper who had a good bug-out plan. He was saved because God reached into the heart of the conflagration and pulled him out for the sake of another.
Notice the final phrase: "the cities in which Lot lived." This is a quiet indictment. Lot was not a visitor. He was not a missionary on a short term trip. He lived there. He had chosen the well-watered plains. He had pitched his tent toward Sodom, and it was not long before he was living in Sodom. He had made his bed, and God in His mercy did not make him lie in it when it caught fire. This is grace. It is unmerited favor shown to a man who had made a series of deeply foolish, worldly decisions, all because he was covenantally connected to a man of faith.
The Greater Abraham and Our Only Hope
This entire episode is a magnificent, real-life parable of our own salvation. We are all Lot. Left to ourselves, we are compromised. We linger in sin. We are vexed by the wickedness of the world, yes, but we are also far too comfortable in it. We pitch our tents toward Sodom in a thousand different ways. We are slow to flee from judgment, and if it were up to us, we would be consumed along with the world.
And the judgment that is coming upon the whole world is far more terrifying than the fire that fell on Sodom. It is the holy wrath of God against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. In the face of that final overthrow, what is our hope?
Our hope is that God has a greater Abraham. Our hope is that God has made an everlasting covenant, not with a flawed patriarch, but with His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus is the ultimate Federal Head. He is the one who stood in the gap and interceded, not just for His kinsmen, but for His enemies. He is the one who fulfilled all righteousness on our behalf.
And so, when God saves a sinner, what does He do? He does not look down and see our vexed but compromised righteousness. He does not see our lingering and our hesitation. He looks upon His Son, and for His sake, He saves us. "God remembered" His covenant with Jesus, a covenant sealed not with the blood of animals, but with the precious blood of Christ Himself. And because He remembers Jesus, He sends us out of the midst of the overthrow. He plucks us out of the kingdom of darkness. He drags us, by His grace, out of the burning city.
Your salvation, if you are a Christian, is not about you. It is about Him. You were not saved for your own sake. You were saved for Christ's sake. God looked at the perfect righteousness of His Son, credited it to your account, and rescued you from the fire you so richly deserved. This is the heart of the gospel. It is not about our performance; it is about His promise. It is not about our worthiness; it is about His covenant. When the final judgment falls, the only safe place to be is under the covenantal headship of the Lord Jesus. For God will remember Him, and for His sake, He will deliver all who belong to Him.