Did Lot Actually Take the Best Land? - Glenn Martin

What would you say is the point where we start, like, losing the thread of the story, essentially? Because, again, if he's called righteous 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, he wrote a whole book about it, but at least hit some of that because I can sense, you know, probably the listeners who are hearing this are like, "Okay, you, you, you, you know, how are you going to explain this one?" I know that was me, you know, when I first heard the topic, I was like, "Wow, how is that? 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 go down to Egypt together. They come back from Egypt together. And shortly after they return from Egypt, within the first year, is when they're going to separate. Okay? 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.

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. People say that he was selfish, or he was, you know, 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 to be a separation somehow, right? 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. 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, 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 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. I've never thought, I've never heard that. It's always like, "Oh, selfish Lot, took the best for himself." I wonder where that comes from.