What then did Lot do? "_He lifted up his eyes._" This is ever our mode of acting when not under the direct power of faith. Whenever we lift up our eyes without divine direction, we are sure to go wrong. I say, without divine direction, for we find the Lord afterwards directing Abram to lift up his eyes, but then that was totally different from Lot's act, which was simply the suggestion of mere human wisdom and foresight. Human wisdom and foresight, however, can never assist our progress as men of faith--no, quite the reverse; human wisdom will ever suggest things which, if acted upon, will lead us right athwart the path of a man of faith. Therefore Lot, in lifting up his eyes, could not penetrate beyond the "things that are seen and temporal." Such was the utmost bound of his range of vision. The things on which his eyes rested were those with which he had been conversant while in Egypt, as we read, "He beheld all the plain of Jordan that it was well watered every where ... _like the land of Egypt_." (10.) Here we observe that Lot had never been really detached in heart and affection from Egypt--he had never learnt the vanity and unsatisfactoriness of all her resources in the light of a better order of things--he had never contrasted her with that "_city which hath foundations_, whose builder and maker is God"--in a word, he "having put his hand to the plow," was now beginning "to look back," and thus to prove himself "unfit for the kingdom of heaven." There is a striking notice of all this afforded in the opening verse of this chapter, "Abram went up out of Egypt and _Lot with him_." Here we get the secret of Lot's after instability. He appears to have gone up rather _with Abram_ than _with God_, and the consequence was that, when he parted with Abram, he had nothing to lean upon. He had been hitherto moving under Abram's protection and guidance instead of being directly before the Lord, and therefore when he lost Abram he went astray. Now then is the moment for Abram to "lift up his eyes," at the Lord's command, and oh, what a different range of vision was his! While Lot could not penetrate beyond the narrow limits of the present scene, Abram was enabled to survey the length and breadth of God's inheritance. He soars on the strong and rapid pinion of faith, and is, as it were, lost in the unbounded beneficence of God; while Lot, the man walking by sight, is well-nigh lost in the deep gulf of Sodom's corruption.