Christine Caine: Remember Lot’s Wife Sermon

Christine Caine: Remember Lot’s Wife Sermon

Many of us are holding onto things that God is asking us to leave behind in order to fully embrace what Christ has taken hold of for us. Let’s dive into Luke 17:20-37 in the CSB. In this passage, Jesus responds to the Pharisees’ question about the arrival of the Kingdom of God. He tells them, “The Kingdom of God is not coming with something observable. No one will say, ‘See here!’ or ‘There!’ because the Kingdom of God is in your midst.”

Jesus then speaks to His disciples, saying that there will come a time when they will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but they won’t. He warns them not to follow anyone who claims to know where He is, for just as lightning flashes across the sky, so will the Son of Man’s return be. However, before this happens, He must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation. He compares the days of the Son of Man to the days of Noah, where people went on with their lives—eating, drinking, and marrying—until the flood destroyed them. Likewise, in the days of Lot, people were buying, selling, planting, and building until fire and sulfur rained down from heaven, destroying them all.

Jesus warns that when He returns, it will be sudden. A person on the housetop should not come down to retrieve anything, and a person in the field should not turn back. He reminds us of the importance of not holding onto earthly things, stating, “Whoever tries to make his life secure will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.” On that day, some will be taken and others left behind, just as vultures gather where a corpse is.

This passage is a powerful reminder about the end times and the reality of the already-but-not-yet Kingdom of God. While the Kingdom has already been inaugurated through Jesus Christ, it is not fully realized until His return. Though no one knows the exact time of His second coming, we are called to live as though it could happen at any moment.

However, rather than focusing on eschatology in general, I want to highlight three important words that Jesus mentions in this passage—“Remember Lot’s wife.” These words are easy to overlook, but Jesus never speaks without purpose. Why did He specifically tell us to remember Lot’s wife, of all the figures in Scripture? Despite being one of many women in the Bible, she is the only one Jesus calls us to remember.

Over the years, I’ve attended and spoken at women’s conferences, yet I have never heard a sermon focused on Lot’s wife. Consider the many other women in the Bible—Eve, Sarah, Esther, Deborah—each of them with remarkable stories. Why did Jesus single out Lot’s wife? It’s clear that there is something significant here, something important we are meant to learn from her. Let’s explore the message behind this powerful call to remember her.