Luke 17: Remember Lot's Wife and Don't Look Back

Introduction

"There is only one woman Jesus told us to remember." Christine Caine, an Australian evangelist and, with her husband, co-founder of the anti-trafficking organization A21, preaches at Gas Street Church in Birmingham, the morning after a women's gathering that drew several thousand participants. She calls this Sunday "Orchard Sunday."

She opens Luke 17, a discourse of Jesus about the end times, with the flood, and the fire and sulfur on Sodom. In the middle of that passage, three words seem to come out of nowhere: "Remember Lot's wife." For Christine Caine, this verse speaks directly to our time, when so many look back with regret and stay frozen in a place they were only meant to pass through.

The message comes down to one conviction: God's promises are ahead of you, in Jesus Christ. It is time to get "unstuck" and move forward.

Outline of the Message

1. The Kingdom, Already and Not Yet

In Luke 17:20-37, Jesus speaks of the two sides of God's kingdom. It is already here, because God became man in Jesus. But it is not yet fully realized: there is still racism, injustice, trafficking, grief, and suffering.
One day the sky will open, Jesus will return, and there will be no more death, sickness, divorce, or injustice.
Christine Caine remembers the big prophetic charts of the late 1980s, where "everyone was the antichrist." "Someone can be sincerely wrong." Jesus says: do not run after those predictions.
After earning a master's degree in theology, she sums up her whole eschatology with humor: "Nobody knows."
So how do we live? "We live as if it could happen tomorrow, and we plan as if it won't happen for generations." If there is something you would stop or start on learning that Jesus returns tomorrow, stop it or start it now.

2. The Only Woman Jesus Asks Us to Remember

Luke 17:32 is one of the shortest verses in the Bible, right after "Jesus wept."
Scripture mentions or alludes to more than 170 women. Jesus said that the act of the woman with the perfume would be told in memory of her, but the only woman he asks us by name to remember is Lot's wife.
Christine Caine imagines the reactions: Eve, who was first; Sarah, who gave birth at 90; Deborah, who stood up when no man would; Mary, who is his mother. And yet Jesus says: Lot's wife.
This woman appears in Scripture only long enough to disappear. We do not even know her name.

3. The Sin of Sodom and the Shaking of Our Time

In Genesis 13, Abram and Lot part ways, and Lot pitches his tents as far as Sodom. It is an age of iniquity, rebellion, idolatry, and immorality, "not so different from the world we live in."
We instinctively think of sexual sin, and often of the sin we are not committing ourselves. But Ezekiel 16:49 says: "Behold, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: pride, fullness of bread, and prosperous ease was in her and in her daughters; neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy."
Holiness matters a great deal to God. Pride, comfort, and forgetting the most vulnerable matter too.
Everything that can be shaken has been shaken, so that what cannot be shaken may remain (Hebrews 12:27). All over the world, Christine Caine hears about "before Covid": our numbers, our giving, our businesses, our relationships before Covid. "Before, B.C. used to mean before Christ."
In her view, God is finished with a self-centered religion of comfort. In the future, his people will take care of their personal relationship with God and their holiness, and will also care about a lost and broken world.

4. Looking Back and Staying Frozen

God had a plan for Lot, his wife, and their two daughters. Their purpose, the promise, and the provision were ahead of them, not in Sodom. Two angels come to pull them out of what is burning, with a single instruction: "Escape for your life! Don't look behind you" (Genesis 19:17).
"But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt" (Genesis 19:26). She stayed "frozen in a moment she was only meant to pass through." She preferred her past to her future.
Christine Caine does not judge her: her life, her friends, her family were back there. But the look the text speaks of is a look of longing, a desire to go back.
The world has changed, but all of God's promises are "yes" and "amen" in Christ (2 Corinthians 1:20). They were never in the economy, in governments, or in people. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8), and this hope is a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul (Hebrews 6:19).
"The only ones who should be stable in today's world are Christians." Yet fear has gripped the Church. But God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and self-control (2 Timothy 1:7). This past decade has revealed how many were not anchored: when the currents change, the one who is anchored holds.
The disciples on the road to Emmaus walked with the risen Christ without recognizing him, locked in their disappointment: "We were hoping that it was he" (Luke 24:21). Many in the Church say the same today: we were hoping the economy would go differently, that someone else would be in power, that such and such a leader would hold firm.
Rather than pointing fingers, ask yourself: have I stayed stuck in disappointment, offense, unforgiveness, disillusionment, lust, addiction, apathy, indifference, or comfort?
We are called to be the salt of the earth (Matthew 5:13). "If we stay frozen like pillars of salt, how are we going to salt the world?"
What follows in Genesis 19, with Lot and his daughters, is deeply troubling. "When mothers stay stuck, it affects the daughters." Our crises, our half-hearted commitment, our prayer meetings treated as optional cost the next generation.

5. What Jesus Did Is Greater Than What Was Done to You

Christine Caine tells of being left at birth in a hospital, without a name and unwanted. She was sexually abused for more than ten years in her own home, by people her parents let in. She grew up in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Australia, the daughter of Greek immigrants, in public housing.
If she had grown up in the age of social media, she says, she would have believed the message telling her to be defined by what happened to her. "We need to be a Church that makes what Jesus did for us greater than what anyone did to us."
"I was abused for ten years, but it has been fifty years since I was. The enemy has already stolen ten from me. Why give him any more?" She does not minimize the pain or the trauma: she only says they do not have the last word.
They overcame him because of the Lamb's blood, and because of the word of their testimony (Revelation 12:11). "A story is not a testimony until it has been tested."
One of her daughters came home from a youth camp in tears because she thought she had no testimony. Yet having known Christ young and having been kept from so many things is a testimony.
"I can't change the past, but the decisions I make in Christ can change the future." We can look back to learn, not to settle there, nor even to idealize the early Church: "Which part? The Corinthians?"
We are after Pentecost and before the return of Christ. We have a mission: the evangelization of the earth. Our hope is in Christ, so we should be the most hope-filled people, people who face sickness, grief, and disappointment with hope. "It is the hope of Jesus that healed me."

6. Forgetting What Is Behind and Pressing On

Paul writes: "one thing I do: forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal" (Philippians 3:13-14). "The blood of Jesus does not give you amnesia. It gives you a life beyond your past." Your story does not define your destiny.
The Church has forgotten how to strain. Our faith muscles have atrophied: we stopped praying, believing, fasting, and fighting by faith. At the gym, you have to lift heavier weights. It is time to pick up heavier things again.
Sometimes we also need to let go of past successes. At 60, she is too busy with what God still wants to do to dwell on what she has accomplished.
In the hotel elevator, a person was getting angry because the elevator wasn't moving. The button wasn't lit. She leaned over and pressed it. Jesus is waiting for some people to press. The Greek word means to exert constant force against something: against apathy, indifference, lukewarmness.
Near Stratford, she researched her husband's family tree hoping to find lords. She found pirates, convicts, criminals, and murderers. In her own family there is addiction, incest, adultery, and abuse.
But on March 30, 1996, their wedding day, they "drew a bloodline in the sand": "With us, it stops." A decision made for themselves, for their daughters, and for the generations that follow.
That is why prayer, faithfulness to Jesus, reading Scripture, and gathering on Sunday matter. "You didn't come this far to stop here."
In her closing prayer, she thanks God for bringing to completion the work he began in this Church (Philippians 1:6) and asks that this day be a line drawn in the sand, where what held the Church back (addiction, disappointment, discouragement, complacency, lukewarmness) loses its power, and God becomes again the center of hope.

Key Takeaways

Jesus asks us to remember Lot's wife: she looked back and stayed frozen where she was only meant to pass through.
God's promises are not in the economy or in leaders: they are in Christ, who remains the same yesterday, today, and forever.
What Jesus did for you is greater than what anyone did to you. The pain is real, but it does not have the last word.
Staying stuck is never neutral: it affects the generations that come after us.
The blood of Jesus does not give amnesia, it gives a life beyond the past. You have to press the button and keep moving forward.

Personal Application

What are you looking back on with longing: a season, a church, a "before" situation?
Where have you stayed stuck: disappointment, offense, unforgiveness, disillusionment, addiction, or comfort?
Where had you placed your hope, apart from Jesus, and what have the shakings of recent years revealed?
What decision can you make in Christ today so that your story does not decide the future of those who come after you?
Which "faith muscle" do you need to start exercising again this week: prayer, fasting, reading the Word, gathering with the Church?

Bible Verses Cited

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does Jesus say "Remember Lot's wife"?

Jesus says these words in Luke 17:32, in the middle of a discourse about the end times. Christine Caine points out that she is the only woman Jesus asks us by name to remember. The only thing Scripture says about her is that she looked back and became a pillar of salt: she preferred her past to the future God was preparing for her.

What was the sin of Sodom according to Ezekiel 16:49?

Ezekiel 16:49 speaks of pride, fullness of bread, and carefree ease, without strengthening the poor and needy. For Christine Caine, holiness matters a great deal to God, but rejecting pride, comfort, and indifference toward the most vulnerable matters too.

How can you stop staying stuck in your past?

Christine Caine draws on Philippians 3:13-14: forgetting what is behind and stretching forward to what is ahead. The blood of Jesus does not give amnesia, it gives a life beyond the past. We can look back to learn, but we decide not to be defined by what happened and to keep moving forward.