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Don't Look Back
Dr. Ronnie Floyd's Sermon preached on August 8, 2010
$6.00 — $12.00
This morning I want to talk about something that’s on my heart. The title of the message for this morning is “Don’t Look Back.” Today I want you to get a copy of God’s Word, and I want you to look with me into the 19th chapter of the book of Genesis. Genesis chapter 19. And I want to read beginning in verse 15 this morning. “At the crack of dawn the angels urged Lot on, ‘Get up. Take your wife and your two daughters who are here or you will be swept away in the punishment of the city.’ But he hesitated. So because of the Lord’s compassion for him, the Lord grabbed his hand, the men, the angels of God grabbed his hand, his wife’s hand, and the hands of his two daughters, and they brought him out and left him outside the city. As soon as the angels got them outside, one of them said, ‘Run for your lives. Don’t look back, and don’t stop anywhere on the plain. Run to the mountains or you will be swept away.’” And then if you would, would you look in verse 22. The scripture says, “Hurry up, run there for I cannot do anything until you get there. And therefore the name of the city is Zoar. The sun had risen over the land when Lot reached Zoar, and then the Lord rained burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah from the Lord out of the sky. He overthrew these cities, and the entire plain, all the inhabitants of the city, and whatever grew on the ground. But his wife looked back, and became a pillar of salt.”
Films and books, and music has been written on the theme don’t look back. But where did the original occur? It began to occur in the 18th chapter of the book of Genesis. For it was in the 18th chapter of Genesis God revealed to Abraham that He was going to destroy the city of Sodom and Gomorrah, that entire region of the world. And as God began to reveal that to him, Abraham became concerned for the people, but also that was where his nephew Lot lived. So Abraham began to pray. He began to talk to God and he said God what if there were 50 righteous people in that city, would you destroy it? God said I’ll tell you what Abraham, if there are 50 righteous people, I will not destroy it. Then Abraham said, “Now Lord what if there’s only 45 righteous people in the city, would you destroy it?” And He said, “No, Abraham, if there were 45, or if there are 45 righteous people I will not destroy it.” Then he said, “Oh Lord, now, now what if there are 40 righteous people in the city?” Evidently Abraham was well aware of what was going on there, and it was not good. And he knew that God had had all He could take. God said, “I tell you what Abraham, if there are 40 righteous people, I will not destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.” He went from 40 to 30 to 20, and then to 10. And he said, “Lord what if there are 10 righteous people, if there are 10, would you destroy it?” And what did He say? He said, “You know what Abraham, if there are 10 righteous people, I will not destroy it.”
But then in chapter 19, God began to rain down judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah. But before he rained down judgment, the real issue was that there was one man, and his name was Lot. He had a wife named Mrs. Lot, and he had two children, two girls. Lot and Mrs. Lot and their two girls were taken out of the city by the angels of God themselves, ushering them away from judgment into safety, and in to life.
But what happened in verse 26? Verse 26 the scripture says, in the 19th chapter of Genesis that she looked back, and she, that is Mrs. Lot, she became a pillar of salt. When you really study the text, and you really want to try to find out what it meant, and why the, why it was so severe that God had her turned into a pillar of salt, you’ve got to ask yourself why was it so severe? What did it mean that she look back?
Let me talk about that just for a brief moment. What does it mean that she looked back? It mean this, it mean that she was lagging behind with a longing for the past life. That’s what word, and the phrase means. You see while they were running forward, she was lagging behind. You might think that she could have been doing some window-shopping there in Sodom and Gomorrah. Perhaps she had such an attraction for what she was used to, she was not willing to leave where she was, and she was lagging behind. And you know what that lagging behind; it put her into the line of the fire of God’s judgment. But not only does it mean that she lagged behind, it means that she looked with regard, and paid attention to it.
In other words, she had an affection for Sodom and Gomorrah, even though she knew God was going to judge it. Even though she knew she was putting her own life at risk, I’m telling you there was something back there, there was something that attracted her, that caught her attention, that set her affections on those cities that she was not willing to go forward. And she not only lagged behind, but she looked with a unique affection upon those places.
Well, what was it that really got her? You know if you’re not careful you’ll get caught up in that, and you’ll miss what the real issue was. She disobeyed God. That’s what she did. I mean God makes it real clear to her, “Don’t look back,” and what does she do? She looked back. God said run for your lives. He even had the angels of God come personally to Lot and his family and walk them into safety, away from judgment, but she still was so attracted by the past, so attracted by what she had there, she could not let it go, and it got her. It got her. And what she was being was completely disobedient to God.
You know sin has a high cost. Sometime we minimize sin. And the day and time, in which we live, we do all we can to make it pretty. We try to fabricate it. We try to put a little icing on it. And we try to make it well its not that bad. And we live in a culture that is absolutely unbelievably so fallen out of the will of God, it is absolutely incredible. That only without a God-sent Holy Spirit revival, our time is limited.
In all of this, God turned her into a pillar of salt. You know what the pillar is? It’s a post. That’s what it is. It’s a post. A post of salt. You say what do you mean by post? Well, you know, Dr. Lowery last week, if you were here, he talked about West Texas. Do you remember that? If many of you were here last week, he talked about West Texas, and he didn’t talk about it real favorably. Now Jeana was raised in West Texas. And I don’t know how many of you have ever been to West Texas, but when you go there, you drive, and you drive, and, and it kind of looks the same, a little bit, but it has it’s own beauty. And you know, West Texas is interesting because you can be in Lubbock, and you can see Amarillo. I mean it’s pretty amazing. But when you’re driving through it, and I’ve done it numerous times, you see post after post after post because fences line it constantly. Next time you see a fence post, think about Lot’s wife. Because you see as you drive around the countrysides of Northwest Arkansas, you’ll see posts everywhere. And that’s what she became. She became a post not of wood, but of salt. Not really even of salt, Josh, she became a post of disobedience.
How would you like your legacy to be in your life disobedience? That every time someone looks at it, disobedience? That’s what she was; she was disobedient to God. And God judged her right where she was in her moment of disobedience.
Back to this sin issue, it has a high cost. You know I didn’t, I didn’t put this where you could see it on the screens. I probably should have because I think it’s so incredible for the generation in which we live. Sin is never created in a vacuum. Sin is never created in isolation. We somehow or other think that it’s my life and I’m going to do what I want to do with my life, and, and, and you know, God will take care of me anyway. Hey, I’m a Christian; He’ll forgive me, won’t He? Oh, you better be real careful with that thinking upfront. Oh yes, He will forgive, but He doesn’t forgive without repentance. Real grief repentance over your sin.
And what does the Lord do? The Lord reminds us in this text that not only does sin not happen in an isolated manner; when a person sins, it affects a lot of people! It affects even a civilization! That’s exactly what it did here! Think about it! Because of her sin, Lot no longer had a wife. The girls no longer had a mom. And dad and those girls ended up committing a horrible sin with one another. Sin is never isolated. So if you think today that what you do, and your choices in your life really don’t affect a lot of people; they affect a lot of people. In fact, there are people all over this congregation today that are broken, hurt, many of you are struggling, dealing with matters that you’d never have thought you’d have dealt with years ago because of one thing; someone close to you, someone you trusted, someone you cared about, someone sinned! And today, you’re picking up the pieces of your own life that were affected by that person’s sin.
You see the scripture here in Genesis 19 talks about the wickedness of the cities. It talks about the sinfulness of the cities. And that’s a message in and of itself. But the principle today that I want to really lift up for you today is “Don’t Look Back.” That’s the principle that I want you to gain and to understand, and to know, “don’t look back,” because that’s what Genesis 19 teaches us is to never look back, but to go forward.
I’m reminded of the Lord Jesus. He knew about this principle. Over in the gospel of Luke, in the 17th chapter, very interesting insight here, and I’ve read through the Bible many, many times. Read through the gospels multiply that by, by hundreds probably, but I saw something that really caught my attention this past week in the 17th chapter of the gospel of Luke. And you know what I saw? Jesus talked about how the kingdom was going to come. He was talking about how He would one day return to this earth. And Jesus said in this situation, Jesus told them, He said that it will be like the days of Noah, and then I will come. And then He goes from the days of Noah to the days of Lot, and He says, when matters look like the days of Lot. And I just want to say to you today, what happened in America this week is absolutely representative of the days of Lot!
And here we are and Jesus said when that happens, and then it’s almost like He takes a quick left or right in His thinking, and He says this; He says just like a man is going to be out in the field, he’s going to be plowing, and going forward, and all of a sudden He gives us a verse that every one of us can memorize. Luke 17:32, and He says, “Remember Lot’s wife.” Remember Lot’s wife; she didn’t keep her hand to the plow. She did not go forward when God told her to go forward. She didn’t get herself prepared for judgment when she should have got herself prepared for judgment, but she decided she was going to go by her own agenda, in her own way, create her own rules, and now she is nothing more than a pillar, and a post, and a legacy of disobedience for generations to come. That’s what Jesus said.
And then Jesus then turned it into this entire incredible saying, and He said, you know what? He said, “Because she tried to save her life, she lost it. And those of us that try to, willing to lose our lives, we are able to save it. And then He talked about how there were going to be in that moment, in that time there would be two men walking, or working out in the field. And one will be taken, and one will be left. There will be two people grinding grain, and one will be taken, and one will be left. There will be a man on a housetop who says, “Hey I better go pack my goods.” He said, “No there ain’t going to be time to go pack your goods, you’ve got to get ready because the kingdom of God is coming, and the kingdom is at hand.”
And the real heartbeat of that goes back to 17, verse 32 in Luke, and that is what? You’ve got to remember Lot’s wife, but you can’t remember what Lot’s wife is like until you go back to Genesis 18 and 19, and understand the 19th chapter of Genesis, and the principle that is lifted up powerfully. Don’t look back! And none of that should surprise us because those of us who are more New Testament intellectually gifted, we would know that what the apostle Paul said over in Philippians chapter 3, what did He teach us, but this one thing I do. In other words, out of all things I do I forget what lies behind me, and I’m reaching forward to what lies ahead.
And so there is the element there of going forward. Now let’s talk about that. How does that apply to your life today? Think about the personal sins that you commit. Think about the times in your life when, when, when you don’t do what you ought to do, and you know it. Maybe there’s some private sins that you have, you wouldn’t want anybody else to know, but obviously God knows. And what happens is, we, we, we look back at those, and we constantly deal with them. They nag us. They condemn us. It’s like Satan uses them as a force to stamp out the fire of God in our heart, and, and we get plagued by them, and we all of a sudden are not sure that we can ever be forgiven of them, nor overcome them. But yet, listen to me today, if Jesus Christ has saved you, and you have been washed by the blood of the Lamb, let me tell you today, your past, your present, and your future sins have been forgiven. And those sins have been committed since you have come to Christ, and you need to deal with those matters, and you need to go to God about those matters, and you need to confess those matters, you need to repent of those matters, if they’ve affected other people, you need to get those matters right in your life. But overall my friend, please understand is that you cannot live your life regretting over past mistakes. You cannot make the mistake, that, that, mistake of looking back, and staying back. No, you have to go forward, and you cannot look back in your Christian life, because if you do, you’ll beat yourself up all the way to Jesus comes, and the day you die.
And anytime you talk to a few thousand people, a few hundred people, a few people, a conference room of people, just a couple of people sometime only one person, you learn real quick there’s a lot of baggage in relationships today. Oh I tell you there’s all kind of issues in relationships; relationships at home, and business, and family, and church, and life, just life. But you know what? The Apostle Paul said you know you need to get it right. Jesus said you need to get it right. You need to go back and you need to get it right. You do everything you can to get it right. The Apostle Paul said in Romans 12, he said as far as it depends on you, meaning you take the initiative, you do what needs to be done, but there comes a time, there comes a point where you have to press forward because in reality as far as it depends on me I am going to be at peace with all men, Paul said. Meaning as long as I can do something about it, I’m going to do something about it. Well you know what? There are many of you today you’ve got carnage of relationships all in your past, all in your past, but I want to challenge you today to do is to go to back and make them right when you can make them right. But there comes a point in time when you’ve got to move on, and you can’t look back anymore.
I tell you what, it’s real easy to feel guilty for past relationship matters that have been obliterated or wronged, or hurt, and it’s difficult to overcome them. It’s difficult to win with them, but listen, there comes a time when you have done all that you can possibly do that you have to go forward, and you have to not look back! What about your life?
We’re on the last two or three weeks of summer. Some of you have been very disconnected this summer. Some of you have been in and out this summer. Some of you have not walked with Christ the way you need to walk with this summer. The summer, the heat, blame it on what you want to blame it on, the heat’s getting it now. Well it’s hot; I don’t walk with Jesus today. Okay. Great. Get ready, you’re going to hell, it’s going to be hot down there. Okay. So whatever, whatever it may be, but I want to challenge you today to understand my friend, that if things have not been right with Jesus this summer so far, you cannot let it plague you the entire rest of the summer, nor the fall. You’ve got to be willing to what? Deal with where you’ve been, get it right with God, and listen to me, don’t look back! Because if you do, there’s nothing stronger than the condemning arm, and the condemning finger of Satan who wants to make you feel like the scum of the earth, and you don’t deserve Jesus at all in your life. Well, the bottom line is thank you Satan for reminding me of that because I know I don’t deserve Jesus in my life! I’m aware of that. But I have Him, and greater is he who is in me than he who is in the world.
And you know, times have changed, Northwest Arkansas has seen those times changed. We’ve been through what economists would say is a recession, not a reception, but a recession. It’s been a terrible recession. It’s been a long-lasting time of economic challenge, not only in America, but even right here in Northwest Arkansas. And what some thought was, you know, we were immune to that. Ahhh, you’re never immune to matters in life. Only the Lord alone protects, only the Lord alone provides. The times have been changing. They have been difficult for some of you. They have been extremely difficult. Loss of job, loss of income, major adjustments in your life. Some of you have lost it all. Some of you have lost some. Some of you may never recover the rest of your life for where you were 5 years ago. You know what? You need to own what you did if you did anything wrong. You need to own any mistakes that you made if you made any mistakes at all.
You know when it’s all going good, it’s real easy to always want more. Sometime I think God is probably to say to Americans, especially those of us that are Christians, when is enough enough? When is enough enough? And in all of this time, you know what? You make right what you’re responsible for. You do everything you can to operate on the high road.
I had a friend not long ago tell me if you’ll get on the high road, there’s not much traffic there, but you get on the high road, and you live it God’s way, and listen, you let it go, and you don’t look back. You let it go, and you don’t look back, and you go forward. Guess what? The Lord’s given us a new norm economically so you can go ahead and live your lifestyle that you’ve been living for the last decade of your life, and act like nothing’s changed, but things have changed some for many of you. And so therefore, please understand, you can’t keep on operating at the level you’ve been operating. Things have changed! There is a new norm. Adjust. And don’t bellyache about it. And get real about it. And don’t let it destroy your future, or destroy your vision, all because of the past. And listen; don’t let it destroy your trust either.
What about you today? What about you? You know the next couple of weeks we’re going to begin a brand-new church here in our church, and some of you have had various ministry positions in our church. Maybe you’ve been teaching or you’ve been in the choir, maybe you’ve been involved in our missions ministry, maybe even involved in our women’s ministry, or men’s ministry, some of you have a leadership role in many of those ministries in our church, and maybe you’ve not been faithful this past year. Maybe you’ve kind of not taken seriously what they talked to you about doing, and you know what? Okay. All right. Now get it right. Confess it to God. Deal with it. And don’t look back. And get yourself back where you need to be. And you can’t let your past, ah, of not taking care of matters that you promised you’d take care of quit you from your future. God wants you to serve the Lord. Serve Him with gladness. Don’t look back.
I have a friend; he’s been in our church some, probably a couple of times. He’s from South Carolina. He’s a little hard to understand sometime. Vietnam War Veteran, eye out, limbs gone, incredible, incredible man. But I remember when he was here he told us both times that he operated his life by what we call the FIDO principle. His name was Clebe McClary. And Clebe said FIDO means these words: Forget it and drive on. And there’s a lot of us today, we need to forget, and we need to drive on. Some of us, we don’t know anything about forgiveness because we don’t know anything about forgetting. Oh we can forget that our wife wanted us to stop by the store on our way home, but we’re not about to forget that scumbag that took advantage of me in a business deal. Understand? No, listen, we’ve got to learn to forget, and we’ve got to learn to drive on. We’ve got to learn to forgive, and we’ve got to learn to release, and we’ve got to learn to go forward.
Today, in my closing time with you, I, I, lifting up this principle of not looking back, don’t look back. I want to give you three simple takeaways that I want you and God to deal with this week. I can’t deal with them for you. You know I can’t preach you into obedience. I can’t, I can’t preach you, and make you do anything. People say boy I just need to hear the Word. No, you need to do the Word. Hearing the Word is part of it, but you also need to do the Word. It’s the Word that makes you what you need to be.
I learned years ago as a pastor that you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. Now I’ve lead you to some water today, the water of the Word of God, now you’re going to determine whether or not you’re going to drink, whether or not you’re going to deal with it in your own personal life.
The three simple takeaways, beginning with:
Takeaway #1: Holding on to the way it used to be will make you irrelevant today. It doesn’t matter whether it’s life, church, business, family, just living; if you hold on to the way it used to be, it will make you irrelevant today. I am convinced that the reason so much of the world doesn’t embrace the message of the church is not because there’s a problem with the message, because if the message is the gospel, it is the power of God under salvation, but many of us are holding on so much to the past, about the way it used to be, it’s never going to be that way again! You need to forget it, and you need to drive on! You need to take the good of the past, the great memories of the past, the truth of the past, and move forward or else you’re going to be so irrelevant to culture that we’re in trouble.
My friend Ed Stetzer, who’s an incredible researcher, and gifted communicator and writer. Stetzer said, he said, you know, he said if the 1960’s ever come back in, most of our churches will be ready for it. And there’s a lot of truth to that. But many of our own lives would be ready for it because we’re holding on so much. We want so much the way it used to be. And you know what we do? We play this game, and Satan plays this game with all of us where we think about oh man, those were the days. Well those weren’t that good of days, you’re just getting old, dude. You know? You know, I mean hey, you know what? When you find yourself talking more about the past than about the future, that means one thing: you are aging ungracefully because God wants you to be relevant, contemporary, all the way to the end with the truth of the gospel in your gospel gun, and you’re shooting it to anyone who will have an ear to hear the Word of the Lord. Don’t look back.
Takeaway #2: A longing for what once was will paralyze you in the present. Oh a longing for what once was, remember oh Lot’s wife, this statement’s made for Lot’s wife. What did she do? She was lagging behind. She was longing with affection. Oh, I love Sodom and Gomorrah. I love seeing all that sin. I loved being a part of that deal. And God nailed her! God didn’t nail her because God wasn’t merciful, or God didn’t care; God led the woman out! But there was something that wouldn’t let her run. She had a will that was conflicting with the will of God, and God took her out. I mean God took her out. He didn’t want to take her out. He led the woman out. So when you’re led out; go. But she decided she was going to make her own rules. And now that’s just like a lot of us here today. We long for what once was, and you know what? When you long for what once was in your life, it will paralyze you in your present. You can’t determine what needs to be in the present, much less the future, when you do that.
Takeaway #3: An attraction to the past will limit your future. And I promise, I’m talking to the vast majority of you here today on that statement. There is something seductive to looking back. Something that is so seductive, but it’s also delusional I might add, because we delude ourselves into thinking something is that it is not! And therefore, the end result is, is that we limit our future. Listen, it is God that has a future and a hope for you! It is God who has that, not anything about how great your past was. God prepares you through your past. God blesses you through your past. You take your past with you, that which is right, and good, and godly, and the blessings, and you go forward in your life. But even when you’re highly successful of which some of you are in this room today, you will learn real quick in those times of high success moments the worst thing you can do about your future is holding on to your past successes, because yesterday’s victory will not be tomorrow’s victory for your life. Learn from it, grow from it, and go forward in it.
So when you shake all that out, what does it really, really get to? It gets to exposing what I call this morning: The Real Problem. You see here’s the real problem: You cannot trust yourself and trust God at the same time. Because when you do, you know what happens? You become a post of disobedience. She trusted God enough to be led by the hand of an angel out of the city, but she trusted herself enough that she looked back. I wonder what kind of post she left? Was she all the way looking back, or did she just take a glance. You see a simple glance sometime is so seductive you want to go back. A simple glance can be so delusional that you want to go back. Because there’s something so powerfully seductive about the past, and something so powerfully seductive about our sin that makes us want to go back, and every time we go back we get ourselves in trouble because God doesn’t honor disobedience at any level at all. And here’s the issue, you can’t trust yourself, and you can’t trust God at the same time. And I’m talking to a group of people here today that the vast majority of us, how many? 80%? 90%? 99% of us? All of us? There are times in our lives every one of us, when we want to trust God and trust ourselves at the same time! Can’t happen that way. Trusting God means that you have abandoned yourself completely, and you’re placing 100% trust in Him. He will carry me.
That’s what Lot did. That’s what Noah did. Can you imagine Noah? Rain hasn’t even been created and here’s a man talking about the rain coming? Building a boat, getting ready for the judgment. I want to challenge you today, don’t trust God and trust yourself at the same time. Don’t let your life be known as being a post or partial disobedience, or disobedience completely. Let your life, your legacy, not be like Lot’s wife, but let your legacy be I’m going to cast myself completely on the Lord, and trust Him through everything. Therefore, the only thing I really take with me is the Word that He has implanted in my past as I surge forward to the vision God has for me and my life.
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