Lot’s Family in a Wicked Culture

Introduction

In a few minutes, I want to move over to Genesis 19. You can be turning to that text. I want to sort of set the stage for where we’re going to go in this story. I’ve been doing a lot of reading and studying through the book of Genesis really for a couple months now, which is why you’ve had a few sermons from there over these last couple months. In understanding Genesis 19, we really have to start back in Genesis 13. Genesis 13, Abraham and Lot have been exceptionally blessed. In fact, so blessed that they can’t be in the same place anymore. I think there’s a bigger picture going on here where ultimately, through God’s plan, the people of Lot and the people of Abraham are going to separate, which is ultimately part of God’s bigger picture of what he’s trying to do with his chosen people.

But of course, there’s immediate context with what is happening here as well. And Abraham lets Lot choose where he’s going to go. There’s lots of choices to be made.

And he decides to go there. Kind of interesting choice. On the surface, it looks like the right choice. But looks can be deceiving. I just wonder how carefully he considered that decision. How much investigating he did of the people there. Did he consider all the kinds of people who lived in Zor and Sodom and how their influence would ultimately impact his family? It’s hard to know all the details of that, but what we do know is that he made his way toward Sodom. And he probably should have considered a little bit more carefully the influences that this would ultimately have on his daughters and on his wife and on himself. And so we’re told in Genesis 13, 12 and 13, that Lot’s tense came up to Sodom, and the men of Sodom were wicked and great sinners against the Lord.

Yet this is where he chooses to make his home. If you know the story, you know angels eventually come to Abraham and Sarah in Genesis 18. They’re predicting, again, kind of the bigger picture here. They’re telling them they’re going to have the son and they’re going to name him Isaac. But before they leave, the two angels speak to Abraham, and they warn him about judgment coming upon Sodom and Gomorrah. And you probably remember the negotiation text with Abraham and God ultimately saying, Oh, if they’re just ten righteous people, will you spare this city? Knowing Lot is there. And of course, part of this story is, of course, there’s not ten righteous people, and ultimately God’s judgment is going to be rained down upon them. Which again says some things about Lot’s dwelling being among these people.

And so we come to chapter 19. I’m going to read most of this text, and I’m going to leave out one section just for the sake of time, because it’s about Abraham. But in verse 1, it says, The two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. And when Lot saw them, he rose to meet them and bowed himself with his face to the earth. And he said, My lords, please turn aside to your servant’s house and spend the night and wash your feet. Then you may rise up early and go on your way. They said, No, we will spend the night in the town square. But he pressed them strongly. So they turned aside to him and entered his house, and he made them a feast, and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.

But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man surrounded the house, and they called to Lot, Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may know them. And Lot went out to the men at the entrance, shut the door after him, and said, I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. Behold, I have two daughters who have not known any man. Let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please. Only do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof. But they said, Stand back. And they said, This fellow came to sojourn, and he has become the judge.

Now we will deal worse with you than them. Then they pressed hard against the man Lot and drew near to break down the door. But the men reached out their hands and brought Lot into the house with them and shut the door, and they struck with blindness the men who were at the entrance of the house, both small and great, so that they wore themselves out, groping for the door. Then the men said to Lot, Have you anyone else here? Sons-in-law, sons, daughters, or anyone you have in the city, bring them out of the place. For we are about to destroy this place, because the outcry against its people has become great before the Lord, and the Lord has sent us to destroy it. So Lot went out and said to his sons-in-law, who had married his daughters, Up, get out of this place, for the Lord is about to destroy the city.

But he seemed to his sons-in-law to be jesting. As morning dawned, the angel urged Lot, saying, Up, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be swept away in the punishment of the city. But he lingered. So the men seized him and his wife and his two daughters by the hand, the Lord being merciful to him, and they brought him out and set him outside the city. And as they brought them out, one said, Escape for your life, do not look back or stop anywhere in the valley. Escape to the hills, lest you be swept away. And Lot said to them, Oh, no, my lords. Behold, your servant has found favor in your sight, and you have shown me great kindness in saving my life, but I cannot escape to the hills, lest the disaster overtake me, and I die.

Behold, this city is near enough to flee to, and it’s a little one. Let me escape there. Is it not a little one? And my life will be saved. He said to him, Behold, I grant you this favor also, that I will not overthrow the city of which you have spoken. Escape there quickly, for I can do nothing until you arrive there. Therefore, the name of the city was called Zor. The sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zor. Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah soul and fire from the Lord out of heaven. And he overthrew those cities and all the valley and all the inhabitants of the cities and what grew on the ground. Now Lot went up out of Zor and lived in the hills with his two daughters, for he was afraid to live in Zor.

So he lived in a cave with his two daughters, and the firstborn said to the younger, Our father is old, and there is not a man on earth to come into us after the manner of all the earth. Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him that we may preserve offspring from our father. So they made their father drink wine that night, and the firstborn went in and lay with her father. He did not know when she lay down or when she arose. The next day the firstborn said to the younger, Behold, I lay last night with my father, let us make him drink wine tonight also. Then you go in and lie with him, that we may preserve offspring from our father.

So they made their father drink wine that night also, and the younger arose and lay with him, and he did not know when she lay down or when she arose. Thus both the daughters of Lot became pregnant by their father. The born, the firstborn a son, and called his name Moab. He is the father of the Moabites to this day. The younger also bore a son, and called his name Ben Ami. He is the father of the Ammonites to this day. In this story, we see the dangerous influence of unchecked worldliness on the righteous and God-fearing people.

1. Lot Is Knowingly Silent

And I think we see bits and pieces of this in the story. Lot is not obviously without morality. There comes a time when he finally speaks up, which we’ll we’ll talk about. He is not like the people of Sodom, and yet he dwells among them. And he is tormented day after day by the things that he sees around him. And to some extent, that is part of the problem. I want to point your thoughts for just a moment to Psalm 1. I’m not going to turn there. I just want to reference it. And it talks about blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. Interestingly, that is exactly where we find Lot in this story.

He’s made his way so much a part of these people in this wicked culture that I want us to understand where we find him in Genesis 19. He’s not on the outskirts. He’s not dwelling beyond the walls and occasionally comes in to do commerce or anything like that. I don’t know all the reasons why Lot came here. Maybe it was safety. You know, earlier in the text, he is under threat from other kingdoms, and Abraham has to come bail him out and the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. So maybe it’s the safety of the walls in the city. It’s hard to know exactly why he ends up here, but he does end up here. But the bigger thing to me is how Lot just silently dwells among these people.

Look carefully at where we read earlier. The two angels come to Sodom, and Lot was sitting in the gate. The gate is a place of respect in ancient cities. It is sometimes where decisions were made or where even some commerce happens. You might remember in the story of Ruth and Boaz. This is where he goes to determine the fate of Ruth and settle all of that. But it is a place that is really a place of respect and social interaction. And what this says is that really Lot had found his place among these men. And even more interesting, when he looks up and he sees two strangers coming, notice the way he acts.

Why? Why does he want to do that? Even more so, he does not want them to stay. Why is Lot staying? Why is he still among these people? He tells them, don’t stay in the town square. You need to come into my home. Then that way you can arise early and go on your way. You can get out of here.

So it makes me wonder why Lot hadn’t gotten out of there yet when he does not want these strangers to be there, but he knows. He knows what this place is like. And he doesn’t really say much about it. He just sits here with these people in social interaction in this community. He has remained here with his family. And so, yes, his righteous soul was tormented day after day when he saw their sensuality and their lawless deeds. It says he saw them and he heard them. But he doesn’t say anything about it. Well, as it’s becoming evening, Lot’s hand is ultimately going to be forced. The people surround the city, you know this well-known story. I don’t have to go into all the details again. But they are demanding that these men come out, and finally now, Lot can no longer remain silent.

He is forced to speak if he’s going to defend these guests in his home. But the reality is it’s just too late. They reject and threaten him. They’re not interested in what he has to say. Another indication that he’s here and has said nothing up to this point. And so my question for us is in a world filled with all manner of warped, wicked things, do we have the courage to speak up before it’s too late? To speak truth to a misled world and to direct them toward the things that are right. I think Lot, Scripture calls him righteous. But it’s an area where he struggled. And the reality is that his family was heavily influenced by the culture in which they dwelt. So, first of all, he is knowingly silent.

2. How Detrimentally This Affected His Family

And second, what we see in the story is how detrimentally this affected his family. The story portrays Lot as a weakened man by this point. It does it in a number of ways, but I’ll point out a few of them to you. First of all, he gets himself into a situation that he cannot handle. It is essentially beyond his control, and we’ll see later in a parallel story how this goes horribly wrong when there’s no angels there to help you out. He does speak up finally, and now this is what he has to say. He’s going to offer up his virgin daughters for the pleasure of these sexually perverse men in a desperate attempt to save his house guests. Lot is not going to win a father of the year award.

This is the state to which he’s gotten. This is what happens to the influence of wickedness unchecked. And it’s easy to criticize Lot, but I have to ask myself, what am I doing to make sure I’m not offering up my children to the warped ways of the world? When the angels finally urge him out of the city, right? He lingers. He doesn’t even get out. He lingers. They pull him out. He’s afraid of everything he’s doing. He’s a man of fear now, not a man of strength. And he acts as such. They tell him to flee to the hill country. He doesn’t want to do that. He’s afraid. He’s going to be overcome, destroyed. Can I go to Zor? Well, then he gets to Sore, and then a few verses later we say he’s afraid to be in Zor.

And so then he goes to a cave. This man lives in fear. This is what he has become. And even worse, Lot’s family is a mess.

I read it the way that I think it should be. In verse 14, there’s a textual Hebrew literary scholar named Robert Alter that I might even reference later, who talks in more depth about this. And I think there’s easy cues within the text that I can point you to show this. But when they warn him about the destruction coming, I think he has more than two daughters. He goes out, so little words sometimes are really important. They say, hey, if you have anybody else in the city, you go out and tell them. Sons-in-laws, sons, daughters, anything. So he goes out to his sons-in-law who had married his daughter. Sometimes it says who were to marry his daughters. But I want you to see the contrast in verse 15 when they tell him, Up, take your wife and your two daughters who are here.

So he goes out to try to warn his sons-in-law, and they just think he’s a joke. They mock at him. And his daughters have married these men. If you want to say that’s not what happened here, and that it’s the two virgin daughters who haven’t married yet, that’s fine. But they’re going to marry these men. I don’t think that’s what’s happening, but either way, his daughters are caught up in a culture of wickedness. And I want you to keep in mind that earlier in the text, when the men of the city are surrounding it, surrounding the house, it says it’s every single one of them, young and old. There’s not a one that’s left. What does that say about these ladies and their men? This is the culture Lot has brought them into.

And so ultimately, they remain in the city, I think, with their sons in law. The two daughters do, and they are condemned. Which may put some perspective on the next part of his family, and that is his wife. His wife makes it out of this city, and she is traveling with them. God gives direct command through the angels not to look back. You know the account. Remember Lot’s wife, probably the most famous part of this whole story that you’ve heard in Bible classes for years and years. I don’t know. Again, I don’t know why they went into the city. I don’t know exactly why Lot’s wife turns back. I’m not sure. Maybe it’s because she has family and friends there still. Maybe her affections are still in that place.

I can think of a lot of reasonable reasons, but the reality is that she openly defied what the Lord told her to do. And so there were consequences.

And then there is the end of this story with his two daughters and their incestuous plan. Robert Alter, who I referenced earlier, says from the Israelite perspective, this story might well have cast a shadow over these two enemy peoples. Both names are etymologized to refer to incest. Moab is construed to Umaeb from the father, and Ben Ami is construed as my own kinsman’s son. In the bigger story, there’s a subtle slight against two of Israel’s immoral enemies, the Moabites and the Ammonites. But I want us to understand in the immediate context. Even though Lot’s daughters escaped Sodom’s destruction, they did not escape the influence of the wicked culture in which they were raised. That is very clear. And so they devise this wicked plan, which later the Torah backs up in Leviticus 18.

The very first thing it references is its warning about these kinds of things. It says, You shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, which is the general area they are in. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father, which is the nakedness of your mother. Even weighing heavier on this slight to those who would do such a thing.

And that is that if I mingle with the wicked world, if I do so silently and knowingly, I can’t be surprised when sin finds its way into my home. When its devastating effects affect even my own family.

3. Something Bigger: The Parallel in Judges 19

But I want us to understand that the Bible writers, they want us to see something bigger that’s taking place as we continue to read to the story of Scripture. It’s actually much bigger than just Lot’s family. And this is where we go to Judges 19. The Bible does this sort of thing frequently, by the way, where you have parallel stories. In fact, Lot is kind of a lot like Noah. Noah, you might remember, came off the ark, he becomes a dresser of vines, he gets drunk, and some inappropriate things happen with his son. And now we see Lot in much the same way, his daughters deceiving him and getting him drunk. There’s a warning here about the sorts of things we allow in our life and the kinds of things that can happen when we do allow them in.

Lot has no idea what’s even going on because he is so drunk. I talked about gluttony, as many of you are well aware and told me yesterday. It was not planned to talk about that before all of y’all piled crawfish on huge trays. That was had nothing to do with my motives in doing that. But at the end of that text that we looked at in Proverbs 23, is this long section about drunkenness. And there’s there’s a lot of pervasiveness in our society and acceptable concepts about social drinking and all kinds of things like that. And I don’t really want to go in depth on that this morning, but I do want to say this at the end of that section, it says something very similar to what we see with Lot here.

And that is you don’t even know it’s happening to you.

These kinds of choices.

Himself, who is a weakened man, even weakened in his moral stances. I think he has good motives, and he doesn’t want to do wrong, like many of us, right? This is the warning. And yet, some of the decisions and some of the things that happened with Lot show how the society around him, because he left it unchecked, affected the choices he’s making and the choices his family is making. Judges 19. There’s many more texts I could point to that also reveal this, like Ezekiel 16, Ezekiel 23. I invite you to go read those that show the graphic nature of what it looks like when Israel and Judah turn and are unfaithful to God. But there’s a parallel structure here with Judges 19 that is appropriate. I’m going to read some of this text.

I’ll set it up just by saying a lot of the aspects to this are very similar. There’s a couple people coming into a city. A man comes, finds them, and says, Do not lay in the open square, don’t stay there. You need to come into my house. Now there is a callousness that’s in this story that’s a little different than in Genesis 19. But I want you to really understand. This story goes out of its way to show this is not the pagan foreign world that is doing this. This is God’s own people who are living this way now. The Levite, who is the key figure traveling to the city, says, No, let’s not go to the foreign nations. Let’s go to one of the cities of Israel.

And that’s what they do, one of the cities of Benjamin, their own people, God’s own people, that’s where they go. And then is the Lot story retold. As they were making their hearts merry, again, this is probably not a good idea. Behold, the men of the city, worthless fellows, this is Judges 19, verse 22, surround the house, beating on the door. And they said to the old man, the master of the house, bring out the man who came into your house that we may know him. And the man, the master of the house, went out to them and said to them, No, my brothers, do not act so wickedly, since this man has come into my house, do not do this vile thing. Behold, here are my virgin daughter and his concubine.

Let me bring them out now. Violate them and do with them what seems good to you. But against this man, do not do this outrageous thing. Can I just stop for a second before I continue reading? And just say, It is unbelievable to me that they have some sense here, that they don’t want them to do this outrageous thing. And what we’re going to see in this text is a pretty outrageous thing that they both feel okay with. Pretty sad, the state they’ve reached. But the men would not listen. They’re not interested in this offer, sacrificing his daughter and this man’s wife. So the man, the Levite, seized his concubine and made her go out to them, and they knew her and abused her all night until morning.

And as the dawn began to break, they let her go. And as morning appeared, the woman came and fell down at the door of the man’s house where her master was, until it was light. And her master rose up in the morning. And when he opened the doors of the house and went out to go on his way, behold, there was his concubine lying at the door of the house with their hands on the threshold. And he said to her, Get up, let us be going. Look, I’m not even going to read the rest of this. I don’t need to, but I want you to see the callousness of what happens when we don’t deal with sin. Oh, they think certain things are outrageous. But in the midst of that, he’s fully comfortable to throw this woman out there and let her get abused all night long.

And then when he gets up in the morning, that’s a key point. You know what these men do? They ignore it. They go to sleep. They don’t deal with the sin of their brothers and sisters. They don’t deal with what’s actually happening. They ignore it. They’re willing to be silent and not deal with the problem. And then they come out and he is rough and callous with her and says, get up, not even realizing she’s dead. And he does all of this to save his own skin. I think there’s some redeemable qualities with Lot. I don’t see a lot here. And this is what happens when sin infiltrates God’s house. When we allow it to infiltrate our homes.

4. What Is the Response of God's People?

What is the response of God’s people? Well, I hope it is to proclaim the beauty and holiness of living in God’s ways. And ultimately, it is that the gospel is the answer. It is God’s way that works. It is God’s way that is best. It is God that holds the goods and not Satan. It is God’s way that is filled with blessing. And while the world’s lies are full of emptiness and disappointment and selfishness that lead us to no purpose and no meaning in life. Blessed is the man who does not sit in the seed of scoffers, the psalmist says.

Conclusion

What is our response? Do we sit quietly in the gate like Lot? Or are we going to rise up as God’s people and speak truth? In a world that is warped and full of chaos. Maybe this morning your answer is that you need to give yourself to Jesus. That’s the first step. It’s becoming a new person. You can’t call out the sins of the world and deny the things of the world when you remain in the world. And if you realize that way of life is empty and worthless, like these worthless men in these two different cities, and you don’t want to be a part of that, you don’t want to commend it, you no longer want to stay silent about it and you want to speak truth.

The first step in that, if you haven’t done so, is to become a new person in Jesus Christ, to die to self and to be bound to Him. Maybe you realize you’ve allowed sinful influences to fill your mind. Maybe you’re already Christian, but it’s time to recalibrate and come back to Him and live more like Jesus. Tom mentioned this morning in his prayer the importance of humility and love. And maybe you realize you haven’t exhibited those in your life lately. And it’s time to change.

And we realize the need to live not like the world, but to live like Christ, willing to speak truth into a lost and dying world. Can we help you this morning? Come now as we stand and we sing.