Genesis 19: 30-38 “The Sad Results Of Poor Decision Making”

Here we are again. Another a very sad story, and another  very difficult  text to preach on  – not one that I would have chosen  to preach on, if I had my way. But  the Bible  holds us accountable, and we  must  deal with every issue as it presents itself , and with the help of the Holy Spirit who caused this to be written down for our sake, we must seek to understand what this  means  for our own day and  times.  

In a nutshell then,  our portion of Scripture  presents us with  a  thoughtful study  on the nature  and results of pathetic and  shallow and self- willed  thinking, drivenby a  form of living that feeds on short term gratification and based  on a lack of godly reflection, resulting in devastating long term consequences.

We have   previously seen that Abraham’s nephew, Lot, had chosen to live in Sodom, one of a number of cities at that time known by God for sustained patterns of sexual immorality, and a wide acceptance of the practise of homosexuality in particular. Although he was not guilty of the sins of the men of Sodom, Lot had chosen to live there. 2 Peter 2:7,8 tells us that  Lot was actually a righteous man, and we cannot argue with the assessment of Scripture.  We know that he actually defended the angelic visitors against homosexual rape. He told the people of Sodom not to act so wickedly (19:7)….”He was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds…” (2 Pet. 2:8)

But the fact remains that he and his family had settled into a comfortable mode here, and therefore were liable to the temptation of compromise. Many Christians struggle with this   tendency. The Bible warns us repeatedly to flee temptation. But the heart wants what the heart wants.  And so we find that his daughters, who clearly did not share their father’s sensitivity to sin, were to be married to men of that city. When the angels of judgement urged them and their prospective husbands to get out of the city   because the LORD God was going to send a devastating destruction upon it, they chose to stay. Likewise, Mrs Lot, whilst dutifully fleeing with her husband and daughters, kept looking back, for her heart was still in Sodom, and the Bible tells us that she too perished.

In the end, only Lot and his two daughters escaped. Whilst Lot had it in his mind to escape to a little town called Zoar (19:20), we are told that he and his daughters never actually settled in Zoar, for he was afraid to live in Zoar. 
Why was he afraid to live there? Well, Zoar was essentially like the cities that perished in this great judgement, and this city escaped by God’s mercy alone. It seems most likely then that he thought that Zoar was going to meet the same fate in time, and so Lot and his two daughters, out of fear chose not to live there, but instead  they went to live in a cave, away from the city.  Fear, incidentally is never a good motivation for living wisely.  Fear makes us insecure, and we easily become candidates for making bad choices. This is what happened in Lot’s case.   It happened in the case of Abraham. We saw it in   12: 10-20 when Abraham, as a result of the drought went down to in Egypt, and when he feared that Pharaoh would kill him on account of his beautiful wife, Sarah. We shall see the same thing happening again in Chapter 20, when Abimelech takes Sarah for himself, because Abraham said that she was his sister. There was clearly something in Sarah’s appearance that made her very attractive, even in her older years.

Back in the cave, and in the meantime Lot’s daughters began to think about their future – about having a family, and then they thought that there was no future. All they had was their old father, and so they schemed. And then the unthinkable happened.  They schemed to get him drunk and then to lie with him, to get an offspring for themselves by this ungodly means.   John Calvin comments, “It is true that they were not so much motivated by sensual lust as a foolish desire to procreate their family.”[1]

Under the influence of alcohol, convictions and morals and inhibitions crumble. Immoral conduct becomes more likely when alcohol is involved. We see this in our city. Most car accidents are caused by drunken driving.  People are routinely stabbed and killed in nightclubs where alcohol liberally flows. Wife abuse, husband abuse, child abuse is accentuated when alcohol is involved.  There is a connection between drunkenness and sexual immorality. Alcohol lowers inhibitions, and people lose control, and it leads to all sort of long term problems.

You will remember that a similar thing happened to Noah (Gen. 9: 18—29). He planted a vineyard, made wine, and became so drunk, that he lost his sense of modesty and he was found lying exposed and naked in his tent. When his son Ham   found Him in this condition it seems that Ham made fun of his father before his brothers.  His brothers Shem and Japheth by contrast dared not look at their father’s exposed body and instead they covered him respectfully.   There are some parallels here. Both men were delivered by God from their ungodly societies. Both had escaped the judgement of God upon their societies, and both fell into the sin of drunkenness following their deliverance.     

  

So here they are - Lot’s daughters, thinking about their future, thinking no further than their own noses. But then again,  we  are forced to think about their father. Righteous man that he was, for he was justified by God, yet he was an unprincipled father figure. He chose to live in Sodom, and he was not opposed for his girls to marry men from Sodom. What was worse however is that when the safety of his angelic guests was at stake he had even offered his daughters   to this mob of  sexual perverts  (19:8). 

What does this do to the thought life of a young woman? My father was willing to give me up!  He was prepared to sacrifice me to those beasts!   

And thus begins the vicious chain of abuse. The abused becomes an abuser in turn. One sin leads to another. And now the daughters are not thinking about their father’s honour.  Because he didn’t think about their honour!  He was sacrificing them  on the altar  of a misplaced perspective  on honour  and hospitality,  and now they,  in turn, were  willing to sacrifice a good conscience before God and man for the sake of their idolatrous desire of having a family at any means. In that sense they were actually no different to Abraham and Sarah,  when they used devious means to get children for themselves. They were unwilling to trust God for an outcome. That is always the danger when we want something and when we  want it NOW…. In that process we easily sacrifice God given principles, and this  leads to the danger of making poor choices that have negative and long term effects.

This is a plain warning to all of us who are fathers of daughters. We dare not make little of our daughters’ honour and purity.  Fathers, cherish your daughters and protect them from this oversexualised society. Teach them to love purity. We must not become a stumbling block to them in this regard; otherwise they will count their lives as cheap and disposable.  And be jealous about whom they will marry, without being overbearing.

In this passage we have a sobering reminder of what happens when we are not careful about the company that we keep. It has an impact upon our children. Where we live, and how we respond to evil, and our own spiritual commitments - all of these things are vital in the spiritual formation of our children. Our moral environment significantly influences our lives.  “Bad company ruins good morals” [1 Cor. 15:33].  For this reason the Bible exhorts us to have fellowship with believers of like faith. So this passage reminds us again of the result of the worldly environment in which Lot's daughters had been raised. And they embraced that form of thinking (and not godly reflection) when they became desperate.

Was there another way out? Yes of course.  But they did not think of asking the same LORD that just had delivered them from such a great destruction, to provide husbands for them.  And they could have left that cave and gone to their uncle Abraham.  They must have known that he was living not far from them.  But pride always gets in the way. And   this is the way with worldly young people. They do not want to be found in the company of their religious family.  Perhaps it was too convicting. Maybe they even resented him. Maybe their uncle Abraham even had previously spoken to them about not marrying those boys from Sodom. Who knows?  I know that this is a conjecture, but there is a reason why they did not settle with Abraham.  They did not share the faith of Abraham.  And so we see that there was clearly no godly desire in them, as seen in the next few verses…

VV 36-38 : “Thus both the daughters of Lot became pregnant by their father. The firstborn bore a son and called him Moab (which means, ‘from the father’) . He is the father of the Moabites to this day. The younger also bore a son  and called his name  Ben-ammi ,which means  ‘son of my close relative’ . He is the father of the Ammonites to this day.” 

Now, what were the consequences of this?  ‘In that cave the impregnation was all over in a few minutes but the legacy of what happened there lasted a thousand years’, says Geoff Thomas.  From our reading if the OT Scriptures  we  understand that  the  Moabites and the Ammonites,  the extended family of the children  of Abraham, Israel  became some of their  cruellest and  bitterest enemies, just like the sons of Ishmael, born to the illegitimate union between Hagar and Abraham who became sworn enemies of Israel.  

And so we read for instance that when Israel left Egypt and asked Moab permission to pass through their land on their journey to the promised land, they were refused and resisted (See Numbers 22-24). As a result the Lord pronounced judgement upon Moab. When Israel camped in the plains of Moab and ready to cross the Jordan their men were seduced by Moabite women and they began to sacrifice to Baal the god of the Moabites ( Numbers 25:1).  They were a great stumbling block to Israel.

The Ammonites worshipped the idol god Molech. Molech worship included child sacrifice. Leviticus 18:21 warns Israel:  "Neither shall you give any of your offspring to offer them to Molech, nor shall you profane the name of your God; I am the Lord."

The Moabites and Ammonites also raided Israel in the time of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah and again in the days of the prophet Elisha.  So, the grandsons of Lot did not become friendly cousins, a blessing, but a curse to Israel. 

A last word about Lot.  He disappears from the scene, never to be heard of again. Matthew Henry says this about Lot: "From the silence of scripture concerning Lot henceforward, we may learn that drunkenness, as it makes men forgetful, so it makes men forgotten; and many a name, which otherwise might have been remembered with respect, is buried by it in contempt and oblivion." That's a sad thought. Even though he was a righteous man in his generation, his convictions did not translate into wise family leadership, and so the consequences are that his family line descends into evil, and we take note of the judgment of God against sin.

And yet we find grace in the midst of this mess, and we must not fail to see this.   In the providence of God we find that centuries later a woman comes out of Moab.  Her name was Ruth, and the story of Ruth lives on in a book of the Bible. She eventually married a Jew called Boaz, and to them was born Obed, and of Obed was born Jesse the father of king David.  And of this line Jesus was born, our eternal King, made incarnate by the will of God. He was born to Joseph and Mary, both descendants of David.Geoff Thomas says: “Through the umbilical cord that attached Jesus to Mary, the line of our Lord goes back …to this cave and to a drunken righteous man and his scheming immoral daughters.” 

And, remember, each one of us, this is where Jesus found us,  when He found us … ‘fast bound in sin and nature’s night’ (Charles Wesley: ‘And can it be)’. 

Jesus came to redeem sinners, and we shall discover that nobody will be found in heaven that deserves to be there, but because of the tender mercy of our God.  

We thank God that we may see His grace even in the midst of such  utter  sin and unbelief, and we thank Him once again for  for such  a severe mercy. Amen

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[1]  John Calvin : Genesis, Crossway Publications, p.186