August 14, 2025 • 35 mins
Lot is often regarded in a poor light, yet the apostle Peter described him as “righteous” (II Peter 2:7-8). Glenn Martin explains the research he did on Lot and explores the important pieces he believes we have missed. How was Lot righteous? Have we misunderstood this story? Is there another perspective that has been lost to history?
Glenn Martin’s book: Righteous Lot? a historical retelling
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Sometimes I think of it like a jigsaw puzzle.
If you're putting a puzzle together,
if you get a piece wrong,
you might continue to be
putting your puzzle together
until you realize that
things simply do not work here.
There's something wrong.
And then what are we going to do?
Are we going to keep forcing the pieces
and say it needs to be this way?
Or can we back up and reorganize things
(00:23):
to have a better understanding?
And if we don't do that,
the picture is not going to be right in the end.
It's an honor to have you
on the podcast, Glenn Martin.
So we've connected different times,
but this first time
actually got to meet you in person,
which is great.
(00:44):
You help run the Strength
to Strength YouTube channel,
which we've had a lot of interaction with.
We'll link them down below.
You've done different
ministry things over the years.
And you recently published your first book.
And I remember seeing the title when it came out
and just kind of doing a double take.
And I think maybe some other people did as well.
The title of the book is
"Righteous Lot ?,"
(01:05):
A historical retelling.
And I was like, huh, I've
not really thought about Lot
a whole much in my life.
And so, yeah, you got me a copy of it.
I read it, I was very intrigued.
And obviously there's a whole book on this.
We're not going to cover it all,
but I think it'd be interesting to at least dive
into some of the main points
and maybe pull some lessons
(01:25):
that you've learned through this whole process.
So first question is, how
did you get interested in Lot?
And is not the story of Lot just pretty clear cut
in scripture?
Like why write an entire book about this?
Okay, well, thanks for having me, Reagan.
Two questions there.
The first was, why did I feel there was a need
(01:45):
for a book about Lot?
So ever since I was young,
even in my teenage years,
I had an interest in apologetics.
And anyone who follows the terrain of apologetics
kind of knows the common objections to theism
or to Christianity.
And among those, and there's many different types
of objections, but one
category would be the reliability
(02:06):
of Scriptures and another
being the character of God.
And in many cases, I
think the Christian apologists
have done a really good job
in defending the reliability
of scriptures.
I think it can be
demonstrated that the texts that we have
from the original sources
remains remarkably solid
(02:26):
to this day.
And I think that can be demonstrated
and has been demonstrated very well
in the apologetic community.
But I think one place where perhaps the job
has not been done so well
is in defending the character
of God as illustrating that God is good.
So skeptics will call out things like maybe
the Canaanite conquest, okay?
(02:48):
So there's a lot of
problems or a lot of difficulties
that need to be addressed there.
And the skeptics will call it a genocide
or things like that.
There's books that have been written on this
and some have done a reasonable job.
I think we could do a better job.
Sometimes skeptics will scoff about the God
who sacrificed himself to
(03:10):
himself to save us from himself.
Those are atonement arguments.
And I think there would be better ways
to understand the atonement.
And I think sometimes poor
theology gets in the way of that.
And then the skeptics will
be quick to point that out.
And I think that, again, it reflects against
the character of God if we
are not producing good answers
(03:32):
to those objections.
So then the topic at hand about Lot,
there's some tough moments in Lot's story.
So if Lot was a righteous man,
then what do we say about what happened in Sodom?
So Genesis gives a pretty graphic account
and we need to either determine,
(03:53):
is this man a good man or a bad man?
It would be easy to say he's bad,
depending what our presuppositions are
when we come to the text.
But it's difficult to say that he's bad
because Peter gave his commentary
and he said he's righteous three times.
Yeah, see, I think that's the part
that made me do a bit of a double take.
Okay. Because I'm like,
well, we all know the story of Lot.
Oh yeah, this was bad and all that.
(04:13):
Oh wait, Peter, like the apostles,
says he's righteous in the
New Testament multiple times.
Oh, I don't know what to do with that.
Anyways, yeah, but continue.
Yeah, so I think that the
skeptics have a fair question.
So we have a reliable scriptures,
I think that's pretty solid.
But then can we trust this God
who has given us these scriptures
(04:34):
when he calls Lot a godly person?
Like is God good?
So I think that there is,
it deserves a good answer.
It's kind of a conundrum
that deserves a good answer.
And in my opinion, the Christian apologists
have given all the wrong
answers when it comes to Lot.
Okay.
(04:54):
So I detail these in my book,
and you can easily look these up.
My book is foot noted and you can easily see
that these are responses
of the Christian community
as giving.
So some folks will say
that Lot must have repented
later in life.
There's no record of that.
Some will say that Peter
forgot about Lot's time in Sodom.
(05:15):
And these are given as serious answers.
Whoa, okay, but then if
you're saying Peter is writing
inspired by the Holy Spirit
and this is inspired scripture.
You've got a problem.
Oh, that's dangerous territory right there.
Wow, okay.
So another thing that's commonly said is that Lot
was not held to specific moral expectations
because it was prior to the Mosaic law,
(05:36):
which sounds reasonable.
At the same time though, you gotta say,
well, what was happening in Sodom,
even the Sodomites were
held to some moral expectations
prior to the Mosaic law.
It really doesn't hold up.
Yeah, because God ended up
judging the cities obviously,
very dramatically, so, okay.
(05:56):
And then there's also arguments
about imputed righteousness.
So some will say that Lot was imputed righteous
because of Abraham's faith,
or some will say that Lot was imputed righteous
because of Christ's righteousness.
Interesting.
I'm not sure if I've heard that one before.
That's actually a very common response.
Interesting, okay.
(06:18):
So I think these are all remarkably poor answers.
I think we can do better.
And that's what I attempt to do
by giving a historical
retelling of what really happened.
So oftentimes people will cite what 1 Peter says
about being ready always to give a defense
of the hope that you have.
(06:39):
But the same verse says that we should sanctify
the Lord God in our hearts.
So let me just read this verse.
This comes from 1 Peter chapter 3 verse 15.
It says, "But sanctify
the Lord God in your hearts
and always be ready to give a defense to everyone
who asks you for the reason of the hope
that is in you with meekness and fear."
So people focus on the part here
(06:59):
about being ready to give a defense.
But the verse begins by
saying sanctify the Lord God.
And to sanctify somebody means to make them holy
or better their reputation.
And so if we're doing a good job
of defending the reliability of the scripture,
but we're not showing,
demonstrating that God is good,
(07:19):
giving him a good reputation,
then we're showing that a reliable Bible
is illustrating a bad God.
And that's not what we want to do.
Yeah, okay, okay, I'm starting to see that.
Yeah, so then moving on to the
second part of your question,
isn't the story pretty
clear cut in the scripture?
Yes and no. I think it is.
(07:40):
But many others would read the same story
and would also answer that, yes, it is clear,
and yet they have a completely different picture
of what happened.
So I think it's clear, you think it's clear,
I think Lot is good, you
think Lot is bad, right?
Yeah, yeah, okay.
And we don't come to the
scriptures with a blank slate.
We all have our prejudices, we have biases,
(08:01):
we have presuppositions.
And I think it's
remarkable that the folks who read
Jewish or Christian literature 2000 years ago
have a totally different idea about Lot
than modern Christians today.
So interesting,
interesting, walk me through that.
So 2000 years ago, you would
be around the time of Peter
(08:23):
when Peter said that Lot is righteous
for at least 400 or 500 years before that,
at least 400 or 500 years after that,
we have lots of records that illustrate
what people were thinking at that time.
And it was all good.
Everyone thought Lot was righteous.
Really, yeah, and of
course, if people want references,
(08:43):
you've got all that footnoted and stuff in the book.
But I think that's an important piece
because, and I don't
wanna get into a bunny trail,
but it feels like, like you said,
we don't necessarily come to scripture
with this perfect clean slate with no biases
and all that, we tend to put our perspectives
into the reading automatically.
This is part of, it's part of being a human.
(09:05):
And it's extremely easy to forget that Christians
or other people in the
past have talked about this,
written about this and had perspectives
and totally forget that those existed.
And that was the one thing I
noticed reading through the book
is like, oh, I've never heard that.
Oh, wow, there were people back then
that had a completely different perspective
(09:25):
and just have lost that entirely.
So what you're trying to do with this is,
obviously you're going
back to the text of scripture,
but also saying historically what did the church
or Jewish writers or other
historical people say about it.
Is that a fair way of saying it?
That's exactly right.
Both Jewish and Christian
writers have read extensively
a lot of work that we don't
(09:47):
spend a lot of time with today,
but they show, it's very easy to demonstrate
how the change of perspective has happened.
And I dedicate a chapter,
the afterward in the book
actually follows that through history.
Oh, interesting to where the
perspective kind of shifts.
Oh, interesting.
Okay.
So essentially you're arguing that at least today
(10:08):
we tend to misunderstand a lot
and it's important to
recalibrate in a sense, I guess,
and try to get our heads around, okay,
the story that we have in
Genesis, the story of Lot,
and then Peter later on
saying, this man's righteous.
How do we make this?
How does this work?
How does this fit together?
So I think you've already answered this,
(10:28):
but why does that matter to us today?
And then maybe start going through this,
start explaining this and
answering these objections.
Sure.
Yeah, so I already
mentioned one thing, apologetics.
I think it matters to have this right
because of the unbelieving world,
but I think there's also
consequences even for ourselves.
(10:49):
Broadly speaking, a few
misperceptions here and there
in our theology or our understanding of history
probably won't hurt us.
I'm sure that none of us
are right about everything.
And maybe sometime in some eschatological future,
God will show us everything we were wrong about.
And we might be surprised how many things
we were wrong about, but I think that the better
(11:11):
we can understand things,
the more closely we can come
to the truth of the Biblical storyline,
it's only going to help us to have a better grasp
on scripture and understand
what God is doing in the world.
Sometimes I think of it like a jigsaw puzzle.
If you're putting a puzzle together,
if you get a piece wrong, you might continue
(11:33):
to be putting your puzzle
together until you realize
that things simply do not work here.
There's something wrong.
And then what are we going to do?
Are we going to keep forcing the pieces
and say it needs to be this way?
Or can we back up and reorganize things
to have a more, better understanding?
And if we don't do that,
the picture is not going to be right in the end.
(11:54):
So yeah, I think it takes a
lot of grace and help from God
to really get a real
perspective of what God is doing
and has done in the world.
What would you say is the point where we start
losing the thread of the story essentially,
because again, if he's called righteous
(12:16):
in the New Testament, where
are we misunderstanding this?
Give us maybe some
positive examples from Lot's life.
Yeah, I mean, this is a big question.
Obviously you wrote a whole book about it,
but at least it hit some of that,
because I can sense probably
the listeners are hearing this
and they're like, okay, how are
you going to explain this one?
I know that was me when I first heard the topic.
(12:37):
I was like, wow, how is that going to work?
So yeah, start walking me through it.
Sure.
So early in the story, we have Lot as the nephew
of Abraham, Abram at that time.
They're traveling together
and they would go down to Egypt together.
They come back from Egypt together.
And shortly after they've returned from Egypt
(12:57):
within the first year is
when they're going to separate.
And so we have this little spat that goes on
between the two of them, between Lot and Abraham.
And it's like, how is this going to be resolved?
Well, it gets resolved by Abraham proposing
that we separate and go two different ways.
You can go here and I'll go here or vice versa.
(13:19):
So until this time, I think
there's a lot of discipleship
that was happening.
And I think a lot of mistakes that Lot made
and I think it could have
been handled differently
and better on the part of
Lot in making that separation.
But oftentimes the claims
that are put against Lot
about this are not true.
(13:40):
People say that he was selfish
or he was a lot of different negative adjectives
to describe that.
However, that's really not the case.
Lot knew that they could
not continue to dwell together
because this land was promised to Abraham.
Oh, that's an important
piece that's often missed.
There was going to need
(14:01):
to be a separation somehow.
A second thing that is a factor here,
and I'm just looking here in my book,
there's a lot of records
that Lot was not necessarily
looking for an evil place to go.
Like people say he had his
heart turned towards Sodom,
like he wanted the wickedness of the city.
(14:22):
The reality is that Sodom was not always evil.
And there's records of that
from Josephus and from Philo.
And even from the scriptures,
it seems to indicate that in the book of Jude.
Jude is a book that's talking
about backsliding and so on.
And it gives this example of Sodom
as being a city that backslid.
And I think a strong case can be made for that,
(14:44):
especially if you give any consideration
for other writers, extra biblical writers.
There's a lot of defense
that can be made for that.
So Lot was not necessarily wanting an excuse
to go to Sodom or anything like that.
So another claim that's made against Lot
is that he was choosing the better land
and leaving Abraham with the
(15:05):
hills or something like that.
It's really not true at all.
When you consider that Abraham was in the center
of the promised land, the
place that later is called
the land flowing with milk and honey.
So Lot, I believe, did choose a good land,
but he didn't get the best land.
Abraham already was in
the best land to begin with.
(15:26):
I've never thought, I've never heard that.
It's always like, oh, selfish
Lot took the best for himself.
Wonder where that comes from.
Okay, yeah, interesting.
So there's a few things like that
that I think we could derive
from Scripture if we would.
But we have our
preconceptions that kind of override that
and we fail to realize that Abraham was already
(15:49):
in the promised land.
God said to him that, you
know, look to your north
and south and east and west, everywhere you look,
this is where your land is.
He was in the center of that land.
So yeah, I think that's where it begins.
And then where it goes from there, of course,
is that Lot is in Sodom and he's not there long
until the land of Sodom
(16:09):
and the surrounding cities
are taken captive by the kings from the north.
And then of course, Abraham in huge compassion
goes and rescues him.
I think that was a very
pivotal time in Lot's life.
And from there forward to the end,
I don't think that there's anything negative
(16:29):
to say about him.
I think he learned to walk
in the footsteps of Abraham.
And I think there's a strong theme
in the story of discipleship.
And I think that was like the key point
where Abraham returned good for some of the evil
that had come from Lot.
And going forward after that point,
I think only good can be said of Lot.
(16:51):
Okay, but where are the objections?
Like what do you start doing with people saying,
oh, well, he was living in this wicked city
and that's terrible.
And you know, he got too
wrapped up in the world of Sodom
and all kinds of things in
the story that are brought out.
Do you wanna hit any of those common objections
that are leveled?
(17:13):
Even Peter says that's not true
because Peter says that it
vexed his righteous soul every day.
And so we know that he
wasn't feeling at home there.
But isn't, okay, sure, okay.
But I've heard people say,
well, he's sitting in the gate of the city.
That shows like he's, you
know, whatever, whatever.
(17:34):
That's extrapolated to say, okay,
and you see he's part of
the workings of this city,
which is clearly evil.
That's, therefore he's bad or that wasn't right.
What about that?
Yep.
So there's a lot of records that Sodom became
a very wicked city in that
they would oppress strangers.
And if outsiders came to their city,
(17:55):
they would persecute them,
even kill them and so on.
And, you know, even in some of the prophets,
there's a telling of what God had against Sodom
and the reason for which it was destroyed
was lack of compassion and fullness of bread
and things like that.
Do you know where is that?
I have a document of the--
(18:16):
You was probably in the footnotes somewhere.
That is fascinating,
because now that's a part
of the story you don't hear.
Is that Sodom getting judged for what we call it,
you know, lack of hospitality
or not being willing to share with those in need,
et cetera, et cetera, you know, you could list the...
That's one I don't know if I had ever heard of
until I read through your book and was like,
wait a minute, you know,
(18:37):
I missed that completely.
Sure, yeah, and then I think
what was actually happening
is that Lot was in the city gates in the evening
because he was watching for strangers
who may be coming through
because he wanted to rescue them
from the people of the city.
And so what he's doing is
he sees some people coming.
It turns out to be the
angels, but he didn't know that.
(18:58):
And he's there to take them to his house
because he wants to protect them and save them.
So he wasn't there as a judge of the city
or anything like that.
He was there with the
intent to evangelize the city.
He was in the city gates to protect the people
who come through from the people of the city.
(19:20):
I wonder if some of this
is just misconceptions about
if someone is living in
this really wicked environment,
we make assumptions that therefore they are
capitulating to that lifestyle.
They are living ungodly
because they're in a location
that is obviously evil, right?
(19:41):
Because Sodom is judged.
But that seems like that's just an assumption.
That doesn't mean that that
was actually the case, right?
That's exactly correct.
Like why is that assumption there though?
Like why do we be like, oh, well,
because you were living in an area that was evil,
therefore you're evil.
Right.
That's oversimplified, but yeah.
It is, but nonetheless, it's a good point.
So one thing you need to think about is
(20:03):
Lot's daughters were there in the city as well.
They grew up until they were,
the older one was about 17 years old
at the time that they left
just prior to the city being destroyed.
And in that time, they were not defiled
by the people of the city.
They were still virgins at 17 years old.
(20:23):
And in Sodom, that's quite an accomplishment
for the parent to raise them to that place.
And then they left from there.
So of course, the daughters were already engaged
to men of the city to be married.
And so those daughters needed to decide,
what am I going to do?
(20:44):
Am I going to go and remain with the city
or am I going to go with my father?
And they chose to stick with their father,
which I think shows character on their part.
But then what about people saying,
oh, because Lot didn't leave right away,
that's him saying, oh, I
don't really wanna leave.
I wanna stay here.
The angels say, no, it's gonna be destroyed.
(21:06):
And it's not until almost daybreak
that they actually flee.
Again, I've heard people
say, well, therefore that shows,
he didn't really wanna
leave, but it was finally like,
okay, I guess I have to, I have no choice.
Is that just a misconstrued
or is that putting our own
bias into the text there?
Right, yeah, it is not the accurate picture
of what happened.
I think he did want to leave.
(21:27):
I think he was willing to follow,
but there were some things that happened
that were pretty intense
immediately prior to that.
One being that when the house was surrounded
and Lot is on the inside
and he goes out to the people
to implore them to not pursue these angels.
He says, my brothers don't do this wicked thing.
(21:50):
During that encounter, they virtually killed him,
according to other records,
which would have been
understood through tradition
and probably understood by Peter as well.
So they were, he was not
in a strong physical state.
He was an old man.
And yeah, so I think he wanted to leave.
(22:13):
There was a lot of reasons
that it was difficult to leave,
but nonetheless, they did, they did leave.
And we don't have any indication
that he was unwilling to leave.
That makes sense.
You're basically saying
that's us putting our bias
into the text when the text
really doesn't actually say that.
He was up all night and had almost been killed
(22:35):
by the people of the city.
And so it was, I think he
was in a poor physical state.
And it's kind of strange to assume
that he should be immediately ready to go
because of the word of some
strangers that he didn't know.
That's kind of a good point, yeah.
He'd need to be persuaded
that these are really messengers from God.
(22:56):
And I wonder if there's also the element
of quick trying to get other friends,
other people to come with you,
trying to save others to convince them to leave.
I don't know if there'd be any elements of that.
Of course, you can't know
what happened in those hours,
but ultimately they did flee.
And I think that's the key piece there.
(23:18):
Yeah, are there other chunks of this story
that you wanna address,
specifically other objections
or points that we might have missed here?
Right, so once you have a
certain perception of the story,
then you begin to think that
everything is substantiating
that, you know, it's confirmation bias.
And so because of that,
(23:39):
there's actually a lot of
objections that are raised.
And one of them, of course,
is what happened in the house.
The house was surrounded
the night of the destruction.
A lot went out to these men
who wanted to have access to the angels.
And then the claim is oftentimes made
that Lot was offering his daughters
(24:01):
in exchange for the angels.
And that simply is not what was going on there.
And I treat that in some
detail in the book as well.
But yeah, there's a much
better way to understand that.
I think this is maybe a bit of a lesson here in,
like you were saying, confirmation bias,
(24:22):
or where you have a perspective
of how you think the story goes.
And then when you read the text,
you can put that on the story.
And so it seems to me one of the things
that you're trying to help us with
is try to pull away those assumptions
when we come to the text of Scripture.
And instead of reading it through our own lens
(24:43):
and perceptions, it's like,
what is the text actually saying?
And try to get back to that as best we can
while also knowing, hey, you know,
we're living thousands of
years after this happened.
It's gonna be very hard to remove all the biases
and opinions.
Is there more you'd like to say on that?
There would probably be a
lot more that could be said,
even about the flight and
his request to go to Zoar
(25:05):
instead of going to the mountains.
And I think all those
things have excellent answers.
One thing that we're missing is history.
We don't have the broader tradition
of how the story was
understood by people for millennia.
And so if we only look at the text
and we're coming to the text
of Scripture with our bias,
(25:27):
I think it's not too difficult
to kind of have our bias confirmed there.
So we went through some of the story of Lot,
answered some of the objections.
Of course, you can't go into all the full detail
when people can look up your book or something
if they wanna go deeper.
But let's look at it from a different angle.
What are some positive lessons
(25:49):
that we can pull from the example of Lot?
Sure.
Yeah, so a few things that
come to mind immediately.
One would be hospitality and generosity.
And we have that certainly in the case of Abraham
and also in the case of Lot.
Then in the New Testament,
it tells us that there were some
who because of their hospitality
(26:10):
entertained angels being unaware.
And that would fit to both Abraham and Lot.
That's a really good point.
See, it's very easy to say,
oh yeah, yeah, that was Abraham.
But it was also Lot as well.
That's a great point.
So those are good lessons,
hospitality and generosity.
But oftentimes we think those are good manners.
(26:30):
This is just being nice or something.
But it's actually something
that God cares deeply about.
And even so much so that
they were visited by the angels
because of that.
That's pretty major.
But as you ask the question,
what lessons can we learn?
I'd like to give one
little warning to that question.
(26:52):
Now we live in a time where there's oftentimes
a rush to application.
So too often sermons are given
with only a very little text.
And even in this case,
I came across a blog about Lot.
And it had very little Scripture.
And I actually counted the words.
(27:14):
There was a few quick notes about a few verses.
There was like no exegetical work done at all.
And then 94% of this article was application.
And I think that in this case,
the person had a very wrong
understanding of the storyline.
So if you have a wrong
understanding of the storyline,
then the application also can be very wrong.
(27:36):
There was a writer, Douglas Stewart,
and he wrote a book called
"Old Testament Exegesis."
And in that book, he says,
speaking about his audience,
he says, "They need to be
shown how the application
is based on the proper comprehension
of the passage's meaning.
And they will probably not
take the application to heart
unless this is clear to them."
(27:57):
So we can preach application,
but if people don't understand how that's rooted
in proper exegesis,
then it's probably not going to stick very well.
And I think because of that,
what can happen is that people can give
heartfelt sermons of application,
but then their listeners will
go listen to the next preacher
(28:17):
who's saying something different
and can easily be swept
into a different direction
because it's not well-rooted in the text.
So I would just give that little caution there.
But in response to your question,
besides hospitality and generosity,
there's also a thread of discipleship
that's woven through the
(28:37):
story with, first of all,
Abraham allowing Lot to come with him.
And then he's discipling him.
Jesus said that his
disciple is not above his teacher,
but everyone who is perfectly trained
will be like his teacher.
And I think that's exactly what happened
in the case of Lot,
where Lot became just like
his teacher, like Abraham,
(28:57):
through the discipleship.
So yeah, I think there could be a whole sermon
illustrating discipleship
functions from the story.
And in both the case of Abraham and Lot,
they were both evangelistic,
very enthusiastic about evangelism.
History, extra-Biblical history would show
(29:18):
that Abraham placed his tent at a crossroads
because he wanted to meet passerby's,
because he wanted to be generous and hospitable.
So that's, I think, very interesting.
I think from the same story,
we could learn about intercession,
we could learn about conflict resolution,
(29:38):
we could learn about
trusting God without questioning.
And of course, in the case of Lot's wife,
we could learn about not turning back in the end.
So yeah, I think there's a lot of lessons
that are here for us.
Yeah, so a lot of lessons,
but also not be hasty into application.
That's a really good point.
Yeah, which actually segues quite nicely
(29:59):
into the other question I had here.
So zooming out a bit,
what are some points that you're making
that can help us study and
understand Scripture better,
just on the whole, what are some principles?
Sure.
And then also how can
this help us identify biases
and assumptions too?
And we've already touched on some of this,
but maybe you wanna dig into that a bit more.
Sure.
(30:20):
So I think history is hugely underrated.
History, history, history.
So there is a quote that
if it's new, it's not true.
And if it's true, it's not new.
Oh, I've not heard that before.
That's pretty good.
Yeah, like Solomon said,
there's nothing new under the sun.
Like everything that's been,
(30:41):
we're not coming up with new, good ideas
that haven't already been
elaborated on in the past.
And I think it takes
maybe a little bit of audacity
to disregard the people who have come before us.
In the case of Lot, we
have 3,000 years of tradition.
And yet today, there's almost no commentary.
(31:02):
There's no commentary that I'm aware of
that's favorable to him, except mine.
Wow, that's really interesting.
So it might be considered fringe
for me to write a book that I don't have
any competing works today.
But I think that I'm on the side
of thousands of years of history.
And I think that's pretty
compelling and solid footing.
(31:26):
People have said that we shouldn't read
only our own generation.
We should read outside of our generation.
Amen, like we have resources today
like we never had before from history,
just at the click of a button,
so much that we have available to us,
we should be making the best use of that.
That's a really good point.
(31:47):
We've had David Bercot
on this podcast a few times.
And I'm not sure what the
release schedule will be,
but we were doing one with him.
We just filmed it two days ago on Romans
and specifically Romans 9 and predestination
and some of these interpretations with the text.
And he's like, well,
yeah, but let's start reading
like how different people looked at this
(32:08):
throughout history and just start realizing,
oh, okay, there's actually lots of different ways
to look at this.
Where right now, especially
I come from like the South
where it's like the Southern Baptist style of,
it's this way, and it's like, well, okay,
but historically you can look at it this way
and like, well, but this church father said this.
And it's like, oh, we
should really be aware of that.
So we ended up just doing a whole episode on
(32:30):
what are those things
that people have been saying
historically for a really long time.
And we just forgot, and
it's like, it's right there.
You can go look it up, you can go read these guys
and learn from what they said.
It doesn't mean they're inspired and perfect
and got it all right.
But I'm just, I think
you're really on to something there
with history, especially
(32:50):
though people find history
kind of boring.
So I'm not really sure how we can overcome that.
It's amazing how quickly we forget history.
If we're only reading
what's been in the last 50 years,
we're going to totally be oblivious
to everything before that.
And I think it can cause some pride
because we're the ones who got this right,
(33:11):
not realizing that there's millennia ahead of us.
Yeah, it reminds me of
something C.S. Lewis wrote.
I wish I could remember the quote,
but his friends would make
almost like joke with him
how he had just no clue what was happening
in the modern day because he just wouldn't read
the newspapers, you know?
And he's like, why would I do that?
When I could be reading
(33:31):
thousands of years of ideas
and history and understand all this stuff.
And he was way more interested in doing that.
And of course he made a strong case.
Well, that's why we should be reading
the early church and things.
Absolutely.
And that always kind of stuck with me.
It's like, oh, that's a good point.
Yeah, I'm hearing one of
the things you're outlining is
(33:52):
it is worth our effort to try to understand
more of the historical
context around various scriptures.
And obviously we're using Lot as a case study,
but you could do this for a
lot of other things as well.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Well, as we bring this episode to a close,
are there other pieces
you wanna add to this story?
Anything we might've missed as
(34:13):
we were going through it here?
Yeah, the only thing I would mention is,
what you already mentioned,
this is really a case study,
I think, of how to look
at history through the eyes
of those who went before us
and the historical perspective.
So yeah, I think many, many
more books should be written,
rediscovering what has happened before.
Well, so do you have another book coming
(34:34):
that might give us another case study?
Well, time will tell.
All right, well, hey, thanks for coming on
and telling us about this.
And definitely the work you put in here,
I do feel like we're
ending this on a solid note of,
here's some principles that
we should be keeping in mind
as we study Scripture and remember
(34:56):
that we're not necessarily coming
with the perfect clean slate.
We have biases and confirmation bias.
I suppose that was one of the phrases you used.
I think that's a really important piece
for people to remember.
So anyways, I appreciate it.
Thanks for coming on the podcast.
Thank you.
Thanks for listening to
this episode with Glenn Martin.
If you found this interesting,
you'll wanna check out the interview we did
(35:16):
with Stephen Russell on the Old Testament
saints and non-resistance.
And you can find that linked
in the description down below.
We also have a monthly email newsletter
and you can sign up on our website
and find all our content as well at
anabaptistperspectives.org.
Thanks again for listening
and we'll see you in the next episode.
Sometimes I think of it like a jigsaw puzzle.
If you're putting a puzzle together,
if you get a piece wrong,
you might continue to be
putting your puzzle together
until you realize that
things simply do not work here.
There's something wrong.
And then what are we going to do?
Are we going to keep forcing the pieces
and say it needs to be this way?
Or can we back up and reorganize things
(00:23):
to have a better understanding?
And if we don't do that,
the picture is not going to be right in the end.
It's an honor to have you
on the podcast, Glenn Martin.
So we've connected different times,
but this first time
actually got to meet you in person,
which is great.
(00:44):
You help run the Strength
to Strength YouTube channel,
which we've had a lot of interaction with.
We'll link them down below.
You've done different
ministry things over the years.
And you recently published your first book.
And I remember seeing the title when it came out
and just kind of doing a double take.
And I think maybe some other people did as well.
The title of the book is
"Righteous Lot ?,"
(01:05):
A historical retelling.
And I was like, huh, I've
not really thought about Lot
a whole much in my life.
And so, yeah, you got me a copy of it.
I read it, I was very intrigued.
And obviously there's a whole book on this.
We're not going to cover it all,
but I think it'd be interesting to at least dive
into some of the main points
and maybe pull some lessons
(01:25):
that you've learned through this whole process.
So first question is, how
did you get interested in Lot?
And is not the story of Lot just pretty clear cut
in scripture?
Like why write an entire book about this?
Okay, well, thanks for having me, Reagan.
Two questions there.
The first was, why did I feel there was a need
(01:45):
for a book about Lot?
So ever since I was young,
even in my teenage years,
I had an interest in apologetics.
And anyone who follows the terrain of apologetics
kind of knows the common objections to theism
or to Christianity.
And among those, and there's many different types
of objections, but one
category would be the reliability
(02:06):
of Scriptures and another
being the character of God.
And in many cases, I
think the Christian apologists
have done a really good job
in defending the reliability
of scriptures.
I think it can be
demonstrated that the texts that we have
from the original sources
remains remarkably solid
(02:26):
to this day.
And I think that can be demonstrated
and has been demonstrated very well
in the apologetic community.
But I think one place where perhaps the job
has not been done so well
is in defending the character
of God as illustrating that God is good.
So skeptics will call out things like maybe
the Canaanite conquest, okay?
(02:48):
So there's a lot of
problems or a lot of difficulties
that need to be addressed there.
And the skeptics will call it a genocide
or things like that.
There's books that have been written on this
and some have done a reasonable job.
I think we could do a better job.
Sometimes skeptics will scoff about the God
who sacrificed himself to
(03:10):
himself to save us from himself.
Those are atonement arguments.
And I think there would be better ways
to understand the atonement.
And I think sometimes poor
theology gets in the way of that.
And then the skeptics will
be quick to point that out.
And I think that, again, it reflects against
the character of God if we
are not producing good answers
(03:32):
to those objections.
So then the topic at hand about Lot,
there's some tough moments in Lot's story.
So if Lot was a righteous man,
then what do we say about what happened in Sodom?
So Genesis gives a pretty graphic account
and we need to either determine,
(03:53):
is this man a good man or a bad man?
It would be easy to say he's bad,
depending what our presuppositions are
when we come to the text.
But it's difficult to say that he's bad
because Peter gave his commentary
and he said he's righteous three times.
Yeah, see, I think that's the part
that made me do a bit of a double take.
Okay. Because I'm like,
well, we all know the story of Lot.
Oh yeah, this was bad and all that.
(04:13):
Oh wait, Peter, like the apostles,
says he's righteous in the
New Testament multiple times.
Oh, I don't know what to do with that.
Anyways, yeah, but continue.
Yeah, so I think that the
skeptics have a fair question.
So we have a reliable scriptures,
I think that's pretty solid.
But then can we trust this God
who has given us these scriptures
(04:34):
when he calls Lot a godly person?
Like is God good?
So I think that there is,
it deserves a good answer.
It's kind of a conundrum
that deserves a good answer.
And in my opinion, the Christian apologists
have given all the wrong
answers when it comes to Lot.
Okay.
(04:54):
So I detail these in my book,
and you can easily look these up.
My book is foot noted and you can easily see
that these are responses
of the Christian community
as giving.
So some folks will say
that Lot must have repented
later in life.
There's no record of that.
Some will say that Peter
forgot about Lot's time in Sodom.
(05:15):
And these are given as serious answers.
Whoa, okay, but then if
you're saying Peter is writing
inspired by the Holy Spirit
and this is inspired scripture.
You've got a problem.
Oh, that's dangerous territory right there.
Wow, okay.
So another thing that's commonly said is that Lot
was not held to specific moral expectations
because it was prior to the Mosaic law,
(05:36):
which sounds reasonable.
At the same time though, you gotta say,
well, what was happening in Sodom,
even the Sodomites were
held to some moral expectations
prior to the Mosaic law.
It really doesn't hold up.
Yeah, because God ended up
judging the cities obviously,
very dramatically, so, okay.
(05:56):
And then there's also arguments
about imputed righteousness.
So some will say that Lot was imputed righteous
because of Abraham's faith,
or some will say that Lot was imputed righteous
because of Christ's righteousness.
Interesting.
I'm not sure if I've heard that one before.
That's actually a very common response.
Interesting, okay.
(06:18):
So I think these are all remarkably poor answers.
I think we can do better.
And that's what I attempt to do
by giving a historical
retelling of what really happened.
So oftentimes people will cite what 1 Peter says
about being ready always to give a defense
of the hope that you have.
(06:39):
But the same verse says that we should sanctify
the Lord God in our hearts.
So let me just read this verse.
This comes from 1 Peter chapter 3 verse 15.
It says, "But sanctify
the Lord God in your hearts
and always be ready to give a defense to everyone
who asks you for the reason of the hope
that is in you with meekness and fear."
So people focus on the part here
(06:59):
about being ready to give a defense.
But the verse begins by
saying sanctify the Lord God.
And to sanctify somebody means to make them holy
or better their reputation.
And so if we're doing a good job
of defending the reliability of the scripture,
but we're not showing,
demonstrating that God is good,
(07:19):
giving him a good reputation,
then we're showing that a reliable Bible
is illustrating a bad God.
And that's not what we want to do.
Yeah, okay, okay, I'm starting to see that.
Yeah, so then moving on to the
second part of your question,
isn't the story pretty
clear cut in the scripture?
Yes and no. I think it is.
(07:40):
But many others would read the same story
and would also answer that, yes, it is clear,
and yet they have a completely different picture
of what happened.
So I think it's clear, you think it's clear,
I think Lot is good, you
think Lot is bad, right?
Yeah, yeah, okay.
And we don't come to the
scriptures with a blank slate.
We all have our prejudices, we have biases,
(08:01):
we have presuppositions.
And I think it's
remarkable that the folks who read
Jewish or Christian literature 2000 years ago
have a totally different idea about Lot
than modern Christians today.
So interesting,
interesting, walk me through that.
So 2000 years ago, you would
be around the time of Peter
(08:23):
when Peter said that Lot is righteous
for at least 400 or 500 years before that,
at least 400 or 500 years after that,
we have lots of records that illustrate
what people were thinking at that time.
And it was all good.
Everyone thought Lot was righteous.
Really, yeah, and of
course, if people want references,
(08:43):
you've got all that footnoted and stuff in the book.
But I think that's an important piece
because, and I don't
wanna get into a bunny trail,
but it feels like, like you said,
we don't necessarily come to scripture
with this perfect clean slate with no biases
and all that, we tend to put our perspectives
into the reading automatically.
This is part of, it's part of being a human.
(09:05):
And it's extremely easy to forget that Christians
or other people in the
past have talked about this,
written about this and had perspectives
and totally forget that those existed.
And that was the one thing I
noticed reading through the book
is like, oh, I've never heard that.
Oh, wow, there were people back then
that had a completely different perspective
(09:25):
and just have lost that entirely.
So what you're trying to do with this is,
obviously you're going
back to the text of scripture,
but also saying historically what did the church
or Jewish writers or other
historical people say about it.
Is that a fair way of saying it?
That's exactly right.
Both Jewish and Christian
writers have read extensively
a lot of work that we don't
(09:47):
spend a lot of time with today,
but they show, it's very easy to demonstrate
how the change of perspective has happened.
And I dedicate a chapter,
the afterward in the book
actually follows that through history.
Oh, interesting to where the
perspective kind of shifts.
Oh, interesting.
Okay.
So essentially you're arguing that at least today
(10:08):
we tend to misunderstand a lot
and it's important to
recalibrate in a sense, I guess,
and try to get our heads around, okay,
the story that we have in
Genesis, the story of Lot,
and then Peter later on
saying, this man's righteous.
How do we make this?
How does this work?
How does this fit together?
So I think you've already answered this,
(10:28):
but why does that matter to us today?
And then maybe start going through this,
start explaining this and
answering these objections.
Sure.
Yeah, so I already
mentioned one thing, apologetics.
I think it matters to have this right
because of the unbelieving world,
but I think there's also
consequences even for ourselves.
(10:49):
Broadly speaking, a few
misperceptions here and there
in our theology or our understanding of history
probably won't hurt us.
I'm sure that none of us
are right about everything.
And maybe sometime in some eschatological future,
God will show us everything we were wrong about.
And we might be surprised how many things
we were wrong about, but I think that the better
(11:11):
we can understand things,
the more closely we can come
to the truth of the Biblical storyline,
it's only going to help us to have a better grasp
on scripture and understand
what God is doing in the world.
Sometimes I think of it like a jigsaw puzzle.
If you're putting a puzzle together,
if you get a piece wrong, you might continue
(11:33):
to be putting your puzzle
together until you realize
that things simply do not work here.
There's something wrong.
And then what are we going to do?
Are we going to keep forcing the pieces
and say it needs to be this way?
Or can we back up and reorganize things
to have a more, better understanding?
And if we don't do that,
the picture is not going to be right in the end.
(11:54):
So yeah, I think it takes a
lot of grace and help from God
to really get a real
perspective of what God is doing
and has done in the world.
What would you say is the point where we start
losing the thread of the story essentially,
because again, if he's called righteous
(12:16):
in the New Testament, where
are we misunderstanding this?
Give us maybe some
positive examples from Lot's life.
Yeah, I mean, this is a big question.
Obviously you wrote a whole book about it,
but at least it hit some of that,
because I can sense probably
the listeners are hearing this
and they're like, okay, how are
you going to explain this one?
I know that was me when I first heard the topic.
(12:37):
I was like, wow, how is that going to work?
So yeah, start walking me through it.
Sure.
So early in the story, we have Lot as the nephew
of Abraham, Abram at that time.
They're traveling together
and they would go down to Egypt together.
They come back from Egypt together.
And shortly after they've returned from Egypt
(12:57):
within the first year is
when they're going to separate.
And so we have this little spat that goes on
between the two of them, between Lot and Abraham.
And it's like, how is this going to be resolved?
Well, it gets resolved by Abraham proposing
that we separate and go two different ways.
You can go here and I'll go here or vice versa.
(13:19):
So until this time, I think
there's a lot of discipleship
that was happening.
And I think a lot of mistakes that Lot made
and I think it could have
been handled differently
and better on the part of
Lot in making that separation.
But oftentimes the claims
that are put against Lot
about this are not true.
(13:40):
People say that he was selfish
or he was a lot of different negative adjectives
to describe that.
However, that's really not the case.
Lot knew that they could
not continue to dwell together
because this land was promised to Abraham.
Oh, that's an important
piece that's often missed.
There was going to need
(14:01):
to be a separation somehow.
A second thing that is a factor here,
and I'm just looking here in my book,
there's a lot of records
that Lot was not necessarily
looking for an evil place to go.
Like people say he had his
heart turned towards Sodom,
like he wanted the wickedness of the city.
(14:22):
The reality is that Sodom was not always evil.
And there's records of that
from Josephus and from Philo.
And even from the scriptures,
it seems to indicate that in the book of Jude.
Jude is a book that's talking
about backsliding and so on.
And it gives this example of Sodom
as being a city that backslid.
And I think a strong case can be made for that,
(14:44):
especially if you give any consideration
for other writers, extra biblical writers.
There's a lot of defense
that can be made for that.
So Lot was not necessarily wanting an excuse
to go to Sodom or anything like that.
So another claim that's made against Lot
is that he was choosing the better land
and leaving Abraham with the
(15:05):
hills or something like that.
It's really not true at all.
When you consider that Abraham was in the center
of the promised land, the
place that later is called
the land flowing with milk and honey.
So Lot, I believe, did choose a good land,
but he didn't get the best land.
Abraham already was in
the best land to begin with.
(15:26):
I've never thought, I've never heard that.
It's always like, oh, selfish
Lot took the best for himself.
Wonder where that comes from.
Okay, yeah, interesting.
So there's a few things like that
that I think we could derive
from Scripture if we would.
But we have our
preconceptions that kind of override that
and we fail to realize that Abraham was already
(15:49):
in the promised land.
God said to him that, you
know, look to your north
and south and east and west, everywhere you look,
this is where your land is.
He was in the center of that land.
So yeah, I think that's where it begins.
And then where it goes from there, of course,
is that Lot is in Sodom and he's not there long
until the land of Sodom
(16:09):
and the surrounding cities
are taken captive by the kings from the north.
And then of course, Abraham in huge compassion
goes and rescues him.
I think that was a very
pivotal time in Lot's life.
And from there forward to the end,
I don't think that there's anything negative
(16:29):
to say about him.
I think he learned to walk
in the footsteps of Abraham.
And I think there's a strong theme
in the story of discipleship.
And I think that was like the key point
where Abraham returned good for some of the evil
that had come from Lot.
And going forward after that point,
I think only good can be said of Lot.
(16:51):
Okay, but where are the objections?
Like what do you start doing with people saying,
oh, well, he was living in this wicked city
and that's terrible.
And you know, he got too
wrapped up in the world of Sodom
and all kinds of things in
the story that are brought out.
Do you wanna hit any of those common objections
that are leveled?
(17:13):
Even Peter says that's not true
because Peter says that it
vexed his righteous soul every day.
And so we know that he
wasn't feeling at home there.
But isn't, okay, sure, okay.
But I've heard people say,
well, he's sitting in the gate of the city.
That shows like he's, you
know, whatever, whatever.
(17:34):
That's extrapolated to say, okay,
and you see he's part of
the workings of this city,
which is clearly evil.
That's, therefore he's bad or that wasn't right.
What about that?
Yep.
So there's a lot of records that Sodom became
a very wicked city in that
they would oppress strangers.
And if outsiders came to their city,
(17:55):
they would persecute them,
even kill them and so on.
And, you know, even in some of the prophets,
there's a telling of what God had against Sodom
and the reason for which it was destroyed
was lack of compassion and fullness of bread
and things like that.
Do you know where is that?
I have a document of the--
(18:16):
You was probably in the footnotes somewhere.
That is fascinating,
because now that's a part
of the story you don't hear.
Is that Sodom getting judged for what we call it,
you know, lack of hospitality
or not being willing to share with those in need,
et cetera, et cetera, you know, you could list the...
That's one I don't know if I had ever heard of
until I read through your book and was like,
wait a minute, you know,
(18:37):
I missed that completely.
Sure, yeah, and then I think
what was actually happening
is that Lot was in the city gates in the evening
because he was watching for strangers
who may be coming through
because he wanted to rescue them
from the people of the city.
And so what he's doing is
he sees some people coming.
It turns out to be the
angels, but he didn't know that.
(18:58):
And he's there to take them to his house
because he wants to protect them and save them.
So he wasn't there as a judge of the city
or anything like that.
He was there with the
intent to evangelize the city.
He was in the city gates to protect the people
who come through from the people of the city.
(19:20):
I wonder if some of this
is just misconceptions about
if someone is living in
this really wicked environment,
we make assumptions that therefore they are
capitulating to that lifestyle.
They are living ungodly
because they're in a location
that is obviously evil, right?
(19:41):
Because Sodom is judged.
But that seems like that's just an assumption.
That doesn't mean that that
was actually the case, right?
That's exactly correct.
Like why is that assumption there though?
Like why do we be like, oh, well,
because you were living in an area that was evil,
therefore you're evil.
Right.
That's oversimplified, but yeah.
It is, but nonetheless, it's a good point.
So one thing you need to think about is
(20:03):
Lot's daughters were there in the city as well.
They grew up until they were,
the older one was about 17 years old
at the time that they left
just prior to the city being destroyed.
And in that time, they were not defiled
by the people of the city.
They were still virgins at 17 years old.
(20:23):
And in Sodom, that's quite an accomplishment
for the parent to raise them to that place.
And then they left from there.
So of course, the daughters were already engaged
to men of the city to be married.
And so those daughters needed to decide,
what am I going to do?
(20:44):
Am I going to go and remain with the city
or am I going to go with my father?
And they chose to stick with their father,
which I think shows character on their part.
But then what about people saying,
oh, because Lot didn't leave right away,
that's him saying, oh, I
don't really wanna leave.
I wanna stay here.
The angels say, no, it's gonna be destroyed.
(21:06):
And it's not until almost daybreak
that they actually flee.
Again, I've heard people
say, well, therefore that shows,
he didn't really wanna
leave, but it was finally like,
okay, I guess I have to, I have no choice.
Is that just a misconstrued
or is that putting our own
bias into the text there?
Right, yeah, it is not the accurate picture
of what happened.
I think he did want to leave.
(21:27):
I think he was willing to follow,
but there were some things that happened
that were pretty intense
immediately prior to that.
One being that when the house was surrounded
and Lot is on the inside
and he goes out to the people
to implore them to not pursue these angels.
He says, my brothers don't do this wicked thing.
(21:50):
During that encounter, they virtually killed him,
according to other records,
which would have been
understood through tradition
and probably understood by Peter as well.
So they were, he was not
in a strong physical state.
He was an old man.
And yeah, so I think he wanted to leave.
(22:13):
There was a lot of reasons
that it was difficult to leave,
but nonetheless, they did, they did leave.
And we don't have any indication
that he was unwilling to leave.
That makes sense.
You're basically saying
that's us putting our bias
into the text when the text
really doesn't actually say that.
He was up all night and had almost been killed
(22:35):
by the people of the city.
And so it was, I think he
was in a poor physical state.
And it's kind of strange to assume
that he should be immediately ready to go
because of the word of some
strangers that he didn't know.
That's kind of a good point, yeah.
He'd need to be persuaded
that these are really messengers from God.
(22:56):
And I wonder if there's also the element
of quick trying to get other friends,
other people to come with you,
trying to save others to convince them to leave.
I don't know if there'd be any elements of that.
Of course, you can't know
what happened in those hours,
but ultimately they did flee.
And I think that's the key piece there.
(23:18):
Yeah, are there other chunks of this story
that you wanna address,
specifically other objections
or points that we might have missed here?
Right, so once you have a
certain perception of the story,
then you begin to think that
everything is substantiating
that, you know, it's confirmation bias.
And so because of that,
(23:39):
there's actually a lot of
objections that are raised.
And one of them, of course,
is what happened in the house.
The house was surrounded
the night of the destruction.
A lot went out to these men
who wanted to have access to the angels.
And then the claim is oftentimes made
that Lot was offering his daughters
(24:01):
in exchange for the angels.
And that simply is not what was going on there.
And I treat that in some
detail in the book as well.
But yeah, there's a much
better way to understand that.
I think this is maybe a bit of a lesson here in,
like you were saying, confirmation bias,
(24:22):
or where you have a perspective
of how you think the story goes.
And then when you read the text,
you can put that on the story.
And so it seems to me one of the things
that you're trying to help us with
is try to pull away those assumptions
when we come to the text of Scripture.
And instead of reading it through our own lens
(24:43):
and perceptions, it's like,
what is the text actually saying?
And try to get back to that as best we can
while also knowing, hey, you know,
we're living thousands of
years after this happened.
It's gonna be very hard to remove all the biases
and opinions.
Is there more you'd like to say on that?
There would probably be a
lot more that could be said,
even about the flight and
his request to go to Zoar
(25:05):
instead of going to the mountains.
And I think all those
things have excellent answers.
One thing that we're missing is history.
We don't have the broader tradition
of how the story was
understood by people for millennia.
And so if we only look at the text
and we're coming to the text
of Scripture with our bias,
(25:27):
I think it's not too difficult
to kind of have our bias confirmed there.
So we went through some of the story of Lot,
answered some of the objections.
Of course, you can't go into all the full detail
when people can look up your book or something
if they wanna go deeper.
But let's look at it from a different angle.
What are some positive lessons
(25:49):
that we can pull from the example of Lot?
Sure.
Yeah, so a few things that
come to mind immediately.
One would be hospitality and generosity.
And we have that certainly in the case of Abraham
and also in the case of Lot.
Then in the New Testament,
it tells us that there were some
who because of their hospitality
(26:10):
entertained angels being unaware.
And that would fit to both Abraham and Lot.
That's a really good point.
See, it's very easy to say,
oh yeah, yeah, that was Abraham.
But it was also Lot as well.
That's a great point.
So those are good lessons,
hospitality and generosity.
But oftentimes we think those are good manners.
(26:30):
This is just being nice or something.
But it's actually something
that God cares deeply about.
And even so much so that
they were visited by the angels
because of that.
That's pretty major.
But as you ask the question,
what lessons can we learn?
I'd like to give one
little warning to that question.
(26:52):
Now we live in a time where there's oftentimes
a rush to application.
So too often sermons are given
with only a very little text.
And even in this case,
I came across a blog about Lot.
And it had very little Scripture.
And I actually counted the words.
(27:14):
There was a few quick notes about a few verses.
There was like no exegetical work done at all.
And then 94% of this article was application.
And I think that in this case,
the person had a very wrong
understanding of the storyline.
So if you have a wrong
understanding of the storyline,
then the application also can be very wrong.
(27:36):
There was a writer, Douglas Stewart,
and he wrote a book called
"Old Testament Exegesis."
And in that book, he says,
speaking about his audience,
he says, "They need to be
shown how the application
is based on the proper comprehension
of the passage's meaning.
And they will probably not
take the application to heart
unless this is clear to them."
(27:57):
So we can preach application,
but if people don't understand how that's rooted
in proper exegesis,
then it's probably not going to stick very well.
And I think because of that,
what can happen is that people can give
heartfelt sermons of application,
but then their listeners will
go listen to the next preacher
(28:17):
who's saying something different
and can easily be swept
into a different direction
because it's not well-rooted in the text.
So I would just give that little caution there.
But in response to your question,
besides hospitality and generosity,
there's also a thread of discipleship
that's woven through the
(28:37):
story with, first of all,
Abraham allowing Lot to come with him.
And then he's discipling him.
Jesus said that his
disciple is not above his teacher,
but everyone who is perfectly trained
will be like his teacher.
And I think that's exactly what happened
in the case of Lot,
where Lot became just like
his teacher, like Abraham,
(28:57):
through the discipleship.
So yeah, I think there could be a whole sermon
illustrating discipleship
functions from the story.
And in both the case of Abraham and Lot,
they were both evangelistic,
very enthusiastic about evangelism.
History, extra-Biblical history would show
(29:18):
that Abraham placed his tent at a crossroads
because he wanted to meet passerby's,
because he wanted to be generous and hospitable.
So that's, I think, very interesting.
I think from the same story,
we could learn about intercession,
we could learn about conflict resolution,
(29:38):
we could learn about
trusting God without questioning.
And of course, in the case of Lot's wife,
we could learn about not turning back in the end.
So yeah, I think there's a lot of lessons
that are here for us.
Yeah, so a lot of lessons,
but also not be hasty into application.
That's a really good point.
Yeah, which actually segues quite nicely
(29:59):
into the other question I had here.
So zooming out a bit,
what are some points that you're making
that can help us study and
understand Scripture better,
just on the whole, what are some principles?
Sure.
And then also how can
this help us identify biases
and assumptions too?
And we've already touched on some of this,
but maybe you wanna dig into that a bit more.
Sure.
(30:20):
So I think history is hugely underrated.
History, history, history.
So there is a quote that
if it's new, it's not true.
And if it's true, it's not new.
Oh, I've not heard that before.
That's pretty good.
Yeah, like Solomon said,
there's nothing new under the sun.
Like everything that's been,
(30:41):
we're not coming up with new, good ideas
that haven't already been
elaborated on in the past.
And I think it takes
maybe a little bit of audacity
to disregard the people who have come before us.
In the case of Lot, we
have 3,000 years of tradition.
And yet today, there's almost no commentary.
(31:02):
There's no commentary that I'm aware of
that's favorable to him, except mine.
Wow, that's really interesting.
So it might be considered fringe
for me to write a book that I don't have
any competing works today.
But I think that I'm on the side
of thousands of years of history.
And I think that's pretty
compelling and solid footing.
(31:26):
People have said that we shouldn't read
only our own generation.
We should read outside of our generation.
Amen, like we have resources today
like we never had before from history,
just at the click of a button,
so much that we have available to us,
we should be making the best use of that.
That's a really good point.
(31:47):
We've had David Bercot
on this podcast a few times.
And I'm not sure what the
release schedule will be,
but we were doing one with him.
We just filmed it two days ago on Romans
and specifically Romans 9 and predestination
and some of these interpretations with the text.
And he's like, well,
yeah, but let's start reading
like how different people looked at this
(32:08):
throughout history and just start realizing,
oh, okay, there's actually lots of different ways
to look at this.
Where right now, especially
I come from like the South
where it's like the Southern Baptist style of,
it's this way, and it's like, well, okay,
but historically you can look at it this way
and like, well, but this church father said this.
And it's like, oh, we
should really be aware of that.
So we ended up just doing a whole episode on
(32:30):
what are those things
that people have been saying
historically for a really long time.
And we just forgot, and
it's like, it's right there.
You can go look it up, you can go read these guys
and learn from what they said.
It doesn't mean they're inspired and perfect
and got it all right.
But I'm just, I think
you're really on to something there
with history, especially
(32:50):
though people find history
kind of boring.
So I'm not really sure how we can overcome that.
It's amazing how quickly we forget history.
If we're only reading
what's been in the last 50 years,
we're going to totally be oblivious
to everything before that.
And I think it can cause some pride
because we're the ones who got this right,
(33:11):
not realizing that there's millennia ahead of us.
Yeah, it reminds me of
something C.S. Lewis wrote.
I wish I could remember the quote,
but his friends would make
almost like joke with him
how he had just no clue what was happening
in the modern day because he just wouldn't read
the newspapers, you know?
And he's like, why would I do that?
When I could be reading
(33:31):
thousands of years of ideas
and history and understand all this stuff.
And he was way more interested in doing that.
And of course he made a strong case.
Well, that's why we should be reading
the early church and things.
Absolutely.
And that always kind of stuck with me.
It's like, oh, that's a good point.
Yeah, I'm hearing one of
the things you're outlining is
(33:52):
it is worth our effort to try to understand
more of the historical
context around various scriptures.
And obviously we're using Lot as a case study,
but you could do this for a
lot of other things as well.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Well, as we bring this episode to a close,
are there other pieces
you wanna add to this story?
Anything we might've missed as
(34:13):
we were going through it here?
Yeah, the only thing I would mention is,
what you already mentioned,
this is really a case study,
I think, of how to look
at history through the eyes
of those who went before us
and the historical perspective.
So yeah, I think many, many
more books should be written,
rediscovering what has happened before.
Well, so do you have another book coming
(34:34):
that might give us another case study?
Well, time will tell.
All right, well, hey, thanks for coming on
and telling us about this.
And definitely the work you put in here,
I do feel like we're
ending this on a solid note of,
here's some principles that
we should be keeping in mind
as we study Scripture and remember
(34:56):
that we're not necessarily coming
with the perfect clean slate.
We have biases and confirmation bias.
I suppose that was one of the phrases you used.
I think that's a really important piece
for people to remember.
So anyways, I appreciate it.
Thanks for coming on the podcast.
Thank you.
Thanks for listening to
this episode with Glenn Martin.
If you found this interesting,
you'll wanna check out the interview we did
(35:16):
with Stephen Russell on the Old Testament
saints and non-resistance.
And you can find that linked
in the description down below.
We also have a monthly email newsletter
and you can sign up on our website
and find all our content as well at
anabaptistperspectives.org.
Thanks again for listening
and we'll see you in the next episode.
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