Don’t Look Back

The title of my message this morning is “Don’t Look Back”. Turn to I Sam. 16:1 KJV, Saul was king of Israel and he had just disobeyed the Lord for the second time. The Lord told Samuel to tell Saul that because he had rejected the word of the Lord, the Lord would also reject him as being king.

Read text. How long will you morn? Mourning or grieving is normal. Grieving is part of the healing process. We need to grieve when we’ve experienced a loss, but excessive mourning prevents you from moving on.

Turn to Deut. 34:7-8 (KJV read text). Moses died at 120 years old. I like the way the KJV puts it. It says his eyes were not dim, not his natural force abated. His eyes were still good & he was still strong. There’s a whole sermon in that. But that’s for another time.

The children of Israel wept 30 days. Then the verse says the days of weeping & mourning were ended. Evidently they set a time of mourning & when that time was over, so the mourning was to be over. It would be abnormal to mourn forever.

Moses is dead. The children of Israel knew Moses was dead, but there were some that were still mourning. Moses was everything to them. He was their leader. He did everything for the people. He did their believing for them. He did their praying & even did their repenting for them when they sinned. Now he was dead, & they would have to do their own believing, their own praying & their own repenting when they sinned. It scared them.

Turn to Joshua 1:1-2 (KJV read). Joshua had been Moses’ Prime Minister. Now he was confirmed by God to lead Israel to the promised land. The Lord said, “Moses is dead, therefore arise & go.” Verse 7 (read) “turn not to the right hand or to the left.” In other words--Look straight ahead - Don’t look back.

Now turn to Luke 17:28-32 (KJV read). The original story about Lot was back in Genesis 19, but in the middle of this description in Luke about the Lord’s second coming, it says in verse 32, “Remember Lot’s wife.” In other words, Don’t Look Back.

Let’s turn to the original story about Lot in Gen. 19:12-17 (read Clear Word). The angels were leading Lot & his family away from Sodom. The angel said only one thing, Don’t Look Back. Lot’s wife (vs. 26) looked back & she was destroyed for it. We can be destroyed as well by looking back. We are here this morning because we have come out of Sodom. We have come out of the world of sin & habits & have started on the small, narrow path that Steve Greer talked about a couple of weeks ago. But the bottom line is, it is not how you start, but how you finish that counts.

Lot & his wife believed but they found it difficult to leave everything behind. In momentary confusion & bewilderness, Lot lingered, undecided to what he should carry with him as he fled. The angels laid hold on him & literally pulled Lot, his wife & their daughters by force. Such is the weakness of human nature that even a good man may become so infatuated with the world that he cannot tear himself from it. Gen. 19:17 says that Christ then joins the angels outside of the city walls & adds urgency to their warning. The need for Christ to join the angels in their appeal to Lot suggest that Lot & his wife were even yet hesitant about leaving everything behind.

Could the destruction be postponed? At least until they had opportunity to remove their possessions?

Given time, they might even persuade others to accompany them. Remember they had family in Sodom. They had friends. Why such haste? But Christ appears & commands, “Escape for thy life & look not behind.” There was barely enough time to escape the fire soon to ascend. If Lot’s request for time had been granted, he would have found it increasingly difficult to part with his accumulated fortune of a lifetime. He might even have decided to remain. His only safety lay in an immediate & complete break with the things that bound him to Sodom.

Merely to escape from the city of Sodom was not enough. Explicit instructions were given about what to do & what not to do, if they were to save their lives. They were told not to Look Back. Lot’s wife looked back where her home, possessions & some of her children & grandchildren were. She now refused to give them up. Her fate is a warning to those who would like to be saved, but who are content with half way measures, who seem to forsake the world, but whose hearts are still in it. Not enduring to the end, they cannot be saved. Matt. 24:13 (read ), “But he that shall endure unto the end the same shall be saved.”

Six months after our baptism, we became members of the Little Rock church. We were brand new Adventist & we were excited & on fire for God. We were befriended by a family named Wheeler. Actually, they took us in as part of their family. It was this family that we went to Campmeeting with, each year & usually spent Sabbaths with. The mother had six children. She was baptized by HMS Richards, Sr. when she was a teenager. Her husband, Ted, professed to be an atheist. He didn’t believe in a Divine being or God’s hand in creation. He believed in evolution. She had married him thinking she could change him.

After 45 years of marriage... It hadn’t happened. But all those years, she got six kids up & dressed them each Sabbath & took them to church all by herself.

Barbara was close to daughter, number 2, who was her age. They both had babies less than a year old; so they had a lot in common. Her name was Rhonda. One day she came to us with a concern. Her older sister, Vicky, was giving up. She said, she just couldn’t do it. She didn’t feel she would ever be good enough to make it to heaven, so she wasn’t even going to try anymore. This was in 1975 before we heard the message of Righteousness by Faith.

We didn’t know then, to tell her that none of us is good enough or ever will be to make it to the kingdom. We couldn’t tell her that Jesus is the only one to ever live a perfect life or that Jesus died the second death, so that we don’t have to. We couldn’t tell her, that all, any of us has to do is accept His sacrifice by faith & take Him as personal Saviour & Lord by believing. We couldn’t tell her because we didn’t know ourselves. The news that she was leaving the church devastated us. We just couldn’t understand it. Why would someone deliberately choose death instead of life. After Vicky left the church, four of her siblings also left. So five out of six children left the church.

When family members tried to talk to her she said, “I’ll come back to the church when daddy is baptized.” Which essentially is equivalent to the statement, “When Pig’s Fly”. Remember her father was an atheist & no one felt he would ever become a Seventh-day Adventist. That was 25 years ago.

God is no respecter of persons. Aren’t you glad? Although Ted, the atheist, wasn’t searching for God. God was always searching for him. In 1995 after attending an evangelism series & becoming friends with the pastor, he agreed to Bible studies. There were times he would say, “I want to believe. I just can’t.” The pastor would tell him, “Believing is a matter of choice. All you have to do is choose to believe, & you will.” Ted made that choice. He also choose to be baptized. When he did, his wife called everyone who ever knew him & invited them to come to his baptism. People came from all over Arkansas, Tennessee, Arizona & Missouri. So we drove down for the baptism. What a gathering & celebration that was. Since that time, Vicky has been re-baptized. She & Ted, both have been given the admonition “Not To Look Back”.

That is not the end of the story. We talked to Rhonda last night on the phone. She said her sister, Tammy, has been baptized as well as Tammy’s daughter, Caroline (Ted’s granddaughter). But she said an ever bigger surprise, is that her older brother Rhett (who hasn’t set foot in a Adventist church for years) has been baptized as well as Jenny his fiancé. Rhonda said the little church in Benton, Ark. is almost all Wheelers. God really does bless more abundantly than we could ever hope or think.

Don’t look back to the world. There are many who have one foot in Sodom & one foot out. Once we are on that narrow path, we need to stay on the path. It is our only safely.

When I was running track, my coach told me to always look straight ahead when running. Because as soon as you look behind to see where your opponent is, you loose that momentum or stride you have gathered, & your opponent would over take you.

Phil. 3:13-14 says, “But this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, & reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”

Let this be our prayer. Don’t look back -- press toward the mark for the prize -- JESUS CHRIST!