Scroll to the bottom for thoughts/discussion questions!
One-sentence summary: Sodom and Gomorrah is destroyed, Lot's wife looks back and turns to salt, and Abraham tells another king that Sarah is his sister.
Two angels visit the city of Sodom. Lot, seeing them at the gate, begs them to come and stay with him. They decline at first, but he insists.
That night, all the men of Sodom, young and old, crowd outside Lot's door and demand that Lot give the men to them so they can rape them. Lot opens the door and pleads with them, offering his two virgin daughters instead (how horrible!) Instead, the men say they will take Lot because he is acting "as a judge" over them. The angels pull Lot inside and blind the men. (Apparently the men are so insistent that even in their blindness, they are still trying to get in, because it says that "they became weary of trying to find the door.")
The angels tell Lot that he must leave with his family because God is going to destroy the city, that "the outcry against it has grown great against the Lord." Lot's two sons-in-law don't take him seriously and refuse to leave, and the next morning, the angels have to take Lot and his family each by the hand to lead them out. When they are out of the city, the men tell Lot to flee to the mountains and not look back, but Lot says he is afraid and asks to go to a nearby city, which they allow.
Fire and brimstone hails down on Sodom, and it is completely destroyed, the land with it.
Meanwhile, Lot's wife looks back, and she is turned into a pillar of salt. Clearly, her heart was still with this wicked place, and so she shared in its judgment.
As Abraham sees the smoke from afar standing near his tent, Scripture says that God "remembered Abraham" in saving Lot.
An "interesting" story follows. Lot eventually flees to the mountains and resides in a cave. His eldest daughter concocts a plan. She tells the younger that their father is old, and there is no man for them to be with "as is the custom of the earth," so they decide to get their father drunk for the next two nights and each take turns sleeping with him. They do this, with their father not knowing when it happened, and they each become pregnant with sons that will become the Moabite and Ammonite nations.
Abraham travels on to the south and lies to another king, King Abimelech, again saying that Sarah is his sister. God tells the king in a dream that he is "a dead man" for taking Sarah, but the king (in the dream) pleads with God to spare him because he did not know she was his wife. God says that He is aware of this and that He actually kept him from sleeping with her. When the king confronts Abraham, Abraham says that he was afraid and that Sarah is actually his half-sister.
Abimelech sends Abraham and Sarah on their way and makes a covenant with him, as he clearly sees that God's favor is on him.
Thoughts/Questions:
There is something about where we set out gaze. Have you ever "looked back" when God told you to move on? What were the effects of this?
Although Abraham has faith, he also lets fear get the better of him, as it actually says that he tells Sarah to do him a favor and tell everyone they meet that she is his sister to save his life. Despite his failures and blatant shortcomings, God still commends him as someone who lives by faith. That should give us some encouragement!