Luke 17:32
“Remember Lot's wife.”
The world of mankind is divided into two companies, or, as I may say, into two cities. There is the city of Zion, the church of God, the holy and the beloved city. And there is Sodom, that polluted and accursed city, which is appointed to destruction. You belong to the latter of these. How much soever you may look upon yourselves as better than some others, you are of the same city; the same company with fornicators, and drunkards, and adulterers, and common swearers, and highwaymen, and pirates, and Sodomites. How much soever you may think yourselves distinguished, as long as you are out of Christ, you belong to the very same society. You are of the company, you join with them, and are no better than they, any otherwise than as you have greater restraints. You are considered in the sight of God as fit to be ranked with them. You and they are altogether the objects of loathing and abhorrence, and have the wrath of God abiding on you. You will go with them and be destroyed with them, if you do not escape from your present state. Yea, you are of the same society and the same company with the devils, for Sodom is not only the city of wicked men, but it is the hold of every foul spirit.
Remember Lot’s wife, for she looked back, as being loth utterly and forever to leave the ease, the pleasure, and plenty which she enjoyed in Sodom, and as having a mind to return to them again; remember what became of her. ‘Remember the children of Israel in the wilderness, who were desirous of going back again into Egypt. Num. 11:5, ‘We remember the flesh which we did eat in Egypt freely, the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks and onions, and the garlick.’ Remember what was the issue. You must be willing forever to leave all the ease, and pleasure, and profit of sin, to forsake all the salvation, as Lot forsook all, and left all he had, to escape out of Sodom.
If you look back, and live long after it, there will be great danger that you will never get any further. The only way to seek salvation is to press forward with all your might, and still to look and press forward, never to stand still or slacken your pace. When Lot’s wife stopped in her flight and stood still in order that she might look, her punishment was, that there she was to stand forever; she never got any further; she never got beyond that place. But there she stood as a pillar of salt, a durable pillar and monument of wrath, for her folly and wickedness.
So it was very often with backsliders, though they may live a considerable time after. When they look back, after they have been taking pains for their salvation, they lose all, they put themselves under vast disadvantages. By quenching the Spirit of God, and losing their convictions, they dreadfully harden their own hearts, and stupefy their souls. They make way for discouragements, dreadfully strengthen and establish the interest of sin in their hearts, many ways give Satan great advantages to ruin them, and provoke God oftentimes utterly to leave them to hardness of heart. When they come to look back, their souls presently become dead and hard like the body of Lot’s wife. And though they live long after, they never get any further. It is worse for them than if they were immediately damned. When persons in fleeing out of Sodom look back, their last case is far worse than the first; Mat. 12:43, 44, 45. And experience confirms, that none ordinarily are so hard to be brought to penance as backsliders.
Backsliding after such a time as this, will have a vastly greater tendency to seal a man’s damnation than at another time. The greater means men have, the louder calls and the greater advantages they are under, the more dangerous is backsliding, the more it has a tendency to enhance guilt, to provoke God, and to harden the heart.
To enforce this warning against looking back, let me beseech you to consider the exceeding proneness to it there is in the heart. The heart of man is a backsliding heart. There is in the heart a great love and hankering desire after the ease, pleasure, and enjoyments of Sodom, as there was in Lot’s wife, by which persons are continually liable to temptations to look back. The heart is so much towards Sodom, that it is a difficult thing to keep the eye from turning that way, and the feet from tending thither. When men under convictions are put upon fleeing, it is a mere force. It is because God lays hold on their hands, as he did on Lot’s and his wife’s, and drags them so far. But the tendency of the heart is to go back to Sodom.
Persons are very prone to backsliding also through discouragement. The heart is unsteady, soon tired, and apt to listen to discouraging temptations. A little difficulty and delay soon overcome its feeble resolutions. And discouragement tends to backsliding. It weakens persons’ hands, lies as a dead weight on their hearts, and makes them drag heavily; and if it continue long, it very often issues insecurity and senselessness. Convictions are often shaken off that way. They begin first to go off with discouragement.
Backsliding is a disease that is exceeding secret in its way of working. It is a flattering distemper. It works like a consumption, wherein persons often flatter themselves that they are not worse, but something better, and in a hopeful way to recover, till a few days before they die. So backsliding commonly comes on gradually, and steals on men insensibly, and they still flatter themselves that they are not backslidden. ‘They plead that they are seeking yet, and they hope they have not lost their convictions. And by the time they find it out, and cannot pretend so any longer, they are commonly so far gone, that they care not much if they have lost their convictions. And when it is come to that, it is commonly a gone case as to those convictions. Thus they blind themselves, and keep themselves insensible of their own disease, and so are not terrified with it, nor awakened to use means for relief, till it is past cure.
Thus it is that backsliding commonly comes upon persons that have for some time been under any considerable convictions, and afterwards lose them. Let the consideration of this your danger excite you to the greatest care and diligence to keep your hearts, and to watchfulness and constant prayer against backsliding. And let it put you upon endeavors to strengthen your resolutions of guarding against everything that tends to the contrary, that you may indeed hold out to the end, for then shall you know, if you follow on to know the Lord.
Jonathan Edwards, "The Folly of Looking Back in Fleeing Out of Sodom"
http://the-highway.com/
Psalms 11:6
“Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup.”
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