“Lot’s End” Genesis 19:30-38 July 26, 2009

SI: We are studying the life of Abraham, which is recorded in Genesis 12-25.

We’re working our way through these chapters, story after story.

One of the reasons we study the Bible sequentially is that it forces us to look

at all of Scripture. We don’t get to pick and choose what we like and don’t like.

So on Sunday morning, we open the Bible to where we left off,

and we read the next portion, and trust that the Lord will speak to us.

The passage we will study this morning is one that I would never choose

for a sermon—but here it is, the Word of the Lord.

Before we read, let’s pray and ask the Holy Spirit to illumine our minds.

O Holy Spirit, as we read this horrible Bible story,

help us not to wince or look away, but to peer into it, to look through it,

and to see in it the depth of sin and the hope of grace.

In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by God for their wickedness.

Lot and his daughters and his wife were dragged out of the city

by the angels, practically kicking and screaming.

The angels told Lot, flee to the mountains. Why the mountains?

Because that’s where Abraham lived. Go back to Abraham.

Go back to the people of faith. Reconnect with the church.

But Lot instead went to the city of Zoar. Then he got scared in that place.

And he went to the mountains, but he didn’t go back to Abraham.

This is what happened.

INTRO: A few weeks ago we pulled down some photo albums that were in the top

of a closest. And in those albums are snapshots of the two cutest little girls in

the world—Adrienne and Eliza.

There is one picture we have of Adrienne: It’s Easter morning, last on Marco Is.

She’s in a red dress, with white shoes, a white purse, and white gloves.

The gloves are a little bit to big so the fingertips are folding over.

But she doesn’t notice. She’s grinning because she knows she looks great.

In another picture, Eliza sitting in a tree at her grandparents’ house in Delray Beach.

She’s in a little bathing suit. It’s evident that she has been playing in the dirt,

because her face is smeared with it. And on her knee there is a big band-aid.

Not because she had a skinned knee, but because she liked band-aids,

and she was at her grandmother’s house and got whatever she wanted.

We sat on the couch together and looked at those pictures and laughed and

there was such a flood of warm memories. I remembered those early days in

Florida where they were born. I remembered our move to Cullman when they

were still little.

And then I looked at these two grown up girls sitting with me and wondered where

the years have gone, and was just amazed at God’s goodness to me as a dad.

And I rejoiced in the sweetness and unity and love he has given our family.

Children are a heritage from the Lord.

And all you dads of daughters know your girls have a special place in your heart.

If we could have taken a snapshot of Lot’s girls when they were little,

he would have said that he loved them very much.

Lot was a believer. That’s what 2 Peter tells us.

He was Abraham’s nephew. He knew about God’s covenant promises to families.

He was part of the covenant community, within the circle of those promises.

He knew his daughters were from God.

But never in Lot’s worst nightmare could he have foreseen a day when he would

commit incest with his daughters and they would bear his children.

How does a man go from having little girls wanting band-aids and playing dress-up

to being in a place that is so dark and so perverted

that even reading it makes you sick?

How? A little bit at a time.

Foolish decisions leading to sinful families leading to tragic ends.

As James puts it:

“Desire gives birth to sin, sin when it is full-blown gives birth to death.”

The story of Lot is woven into the story of Abraham

to give us an unforgettable image of a believer who made one foolish decision

after another. Who year after year put off the Holy Spirit’s promptings and the

conviction of his own conscience to reform his ways, until it was too late.

He was saved but he made a ruin of his life.

The old Scottish preacher Alexander Whyte said

that if Abraham is the father of the faithful, Lot is the father of the barely saved.

He’s pulled out of Sodom by the angels with nothing but the clothes on his back,

and he is pulled into heaven the same way—with nothing.

His wife and children lost spiritually and a legacy of moral ruin.

So this is a story of the ruin of sin and it’s a warning for Christians.

But that’s not all—that’s never all.

It’s also a story of God’s sovereign grace.

Grace which you can’t see in this story itself—but if you know where to look

you can see it, and when you see it, you will be amazed.

So let’s look at this passage under two simple headings:

1. Sin’s destructive legacy

2. God’s sovereign grace

Credit where credit is due:

Sermon on this passage by Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle.

MP#1 Sin’s destructive legacy

Lot’s life was characterized by a series of foolish and sinful decisions.

At any time he could have repented and sought God’s mercy,

and there would have been time to undo the damage.

But instead, each decision laid the foundation for the next one.

Then Lot’s children took their father’s decisions to the logical conclusion.

And his descendants carried it out for generations.

It all began with Lot’s decision to live near Sodom.

Lot looked at the green, lush plains of the Jordan near Sodom and Gomorrah

and the Bible says: “It was like the Garden of the Lord to him.”

Wow. That’s my Garden of Eden. That’s what I’ve been wanting all my life.

That’s the comfortable and easy life I want for myself and family.

We know from 2 Peter that Lot was conflicted. Says he was tormented

by the wickedness of Sodom. But he made peace with his decision to live there.

He basically said to himself: I know this isn’t exactly what God wants,

but this is what I want for my family at this time in our lives.

Once he had pushed that matter of conscience away, it became easy for him

to move from living in the fields outside Sodom, to buying a house in Sodom,

and finally becoming a part of the city and community.

Lot’s decision to live in Sodom meant separation from the church.

The church in that day was the family and household of Abraham.

The life God had called Abraham to was a pilgrim life. Meant giving up things.

Lot chose the city life. He chose to live in a place where he and his family

were cut off from regular fellowship and worship with God’s people.

It didn’t affect Lot right away. But over time, over the years as he was separated

from regular Christian fellowship and regular corporate worship

and the community of faith, he was weakened spiritually.

The reason Lot didn’t feel it so much is because things were going great in his life.

Everything worked out as he had planned—he got wealthy, he had a big house,

his daughters were popular, he was well-known in the city.

But what happened to Lot when things fell apart—

when God’s judgment came and he lost his wealth and position?

He had nothing to stand on—he was an empty shell of a Christian.

The angels said: Flee to the mountains. Go back to Abraham.

Reconnect with the covenant people. Get back in church.

But by this time Lot was so used to operating by his feelings rather than by faith,

that he couldn’t see the benefit and it was probably distasteful to him.

Why didn’t his wife help him? Because she was dead.

Turned into a pillar of salt by God for her Sodomite ways.

Lot had chosen to marry an unbeliever. He knew that was wrong.

The Lord had made it very clear that in order to remain true to the covenant,

believers must marry believers. But Lot made peace with that decision too.

Probably in the same way Christians always do when they marry non-Christians.

I love her. She’s a good person.

She’ll come around. But she didn’t come around.

She raised her daughters in Sodomite ways.

When time came to forsake sin, she looked back and God killed her.

So where did all these decisions lead Lot? At the end of his life he was a stranger

to the church, was accountable to no Christian brothers, had quenched the

Holy Spirit for years by violating his conscience living in Sodom,

had an unbelieving wife who was no help at all.

Where did he turn when things finally fell apart? To his wine.

Our last view of Lot, a believer, is passed out drunk in a cave,

with his own daughters having sex with him.

It gets worse. What about these daughters?

Why didn’t they follow the faith of their father?

Why didn’t they believe in the God of Abraham like their dad did?

There must have been many times when Lot shook his head at the dinner table

and expressed his disgust for the perverted ways of Sodom.

But then he turned on the TV and watched Sodomite programs.

He probably told them how important church is for believers.

But they never went to church. Didn’t do much more than pray at the table.

He probably told his daughters right and wrong and that they should trust God.

But his own example rendered his words powerless.

If Sodom is that bad, his daughters reasoned, then why does dad live here?

And when it came time for Lot to guide his daughters in marriage—

He totally punted. He didn’t insist they marry believers.

He chose Sodomites for his sons-in-law.

These were men who laughed in Lot’s face when he told them the Word

of the Lord that judgment was coming.

So is it any surprise when these daughters of Lot say to each other—

There’s no one around here for us to have sex with, it will have to be our father.

No. It’s completely logical. If a Christian parent says to his or her children—

this is important, this is how God wants us to live, this is right and wrong—

but then by his lifestyle decisions blows it all off—a life of compromise.

His children will often say: Oh, I get it.

And won’t even keep up the pretense of Christianity. That’s terrifying.

But it gets even worse. His daughters had two sons.

Older daughter named hers Moab. Means “From Daddy.”

Younger daughter named her Ben-Ammi. Means “Son of my people.”

From these two boys, born of incest, came the Moabites and Ammonites

who would be a thorn in the flesh of Israel for generations.

Look at the progression: A Christian man not living out his convictions,

to children who take that to its logical conclusion,

to descendants who were actively opposed to the kingdom of God.

That’s sin’s destructive legacy. It’s the anti-covenant.

This story forces Christians—especially Christian dads—

to ask important questions about the legacy you are building.

Where will you live? Are you deliberately choosing a lifestyle that enables you

and your family to have regular, active connection with the church?

Or have you pushed that nagging matter of conscience down so far that it

doesn’t bother you any more? You are building a legacy.

Who will you marry? Who will your sons and daughters marry?

Are you taking an active role in that. Guiding, protecting, warning—

or are you content to let your sons date pagan girls and girls date pagan boys

and just hope that if you pray enough things will work out. Building a legacy.

How do you spend your money? How will you face crises when they come?

Do you even think about how the way you handle these things

will affect your children and build a legacy? Lot didn’t and reaped whirlwind.

So where’s the hope in this story? There is no hope in this story.

You have to keep reading. If you do, you discover something wonderful.

MP#2 God’s sovereign grace

As ugly and perverted as Lot’s legacy was—God’s sovereign grace trumps it.

And so we keep reading. And we find in the early books of the Old Testament,

in Exodus and Deuteronomy and Joshua and Judges that the

Moabites and the Ammonites were perverted people.

They were immoral. They practiced child sacrifice.

It’s a foreshadowing of how sexual immorality and abortion work hand in glove.

The Lord told the Israelites to stay away from them.

He said that no Moabite descendant could enter the temple to the tenth generation.

And then we keep reading our Old Testament and we come to the book of Ruth.

Read in Ruth about an Israelite man named Elimelech who was like Lot.

He left Israel and moved his family to Moab.

He justified it by saying that it would be good for them.

It would just be for a little while—but they ended up staying there ten years.

He got pagan Moabite wives for his two sons.

Then Elimelech died. His sons died too.

And that would have been the sad end of that family line.

But his wife Naomi did what neither Elimelech or Lot was willing to do.

She said: I’m tired of this compromised life.

I don’t care how painful it is, I’m going to back to God’s people.

I’m going back to church.

So she told her widowed daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth—

Stay with your people and your gods.

But God in his sovereign grace had been at work in Ruth’s heart.

And she said to Naomi. The gods of Moab aren’t my gods any more.

My God is your God. The God of Abraham. The Lord God of Israel.

So Ruth went to Israel, to Bethlehem with Naomi, and there she met Boaz.

Now Boaz was a man who wanted to build a godly legacy.

He was a successful farmer and businessman but he didn’t love money.

He was fair to his workers, he was kind to the poor.

He honored the Lord in his speech and his ways.

When he saw Ruth he said: That’s the woman I want to marry.

That’s the woman I want to build a family with.

Yes, she comes from that broken, crazy, dysfunctional Moabite clan.

Yes she’s a new convert. But she loves the Lord and is loyal to Israel,

And she guards her sexual purity and she’s a hard worker.

So they got married, and they had a baby boy.

And there was singing and happiness when that boy was born—

not like those two depressing births back in the cave near Sodom.

And there is a genealogy at the end of Ruth and we find out that this son of hers

was the ancestor of King David.

And then we keep reading our Bibles and we come to the New Testament

to Matthew, and there is the line of David and who is born from that line?

Jesus Christ.

And in that genealogy of Jesus,

Ruth is one of only three women mentioned by name.

Ruth, the Moabite. A descendant of the incest between Lot and his daughter,

mentioned by name in the family tree of Jesus Christ the perfect Son of God.

Genesis 19 seems to be a story without a hero.

Lot’s not a hero. His daughters aren’t heroes.

The sons born to them don’t save the day.

But a hero comes. A hero comes who is connected through his great-great

grandmother Ruth to this broken, sad legacy of failure and sin.

And when he comes he doesn’t hide this skeleton in his family tree.

He doesn’t cover up all this shame and immorality.

He claims it. He redeems it. And God’s grace to Ruth shines all the brighter,

and her name stand out with even more wonder because of her past.

That’s how good God is.

There’s room in the family of God for old fools like Lot

and for Moabites like Ruth.

Anyone, no matter how vile their sin, or how broken their past

can come into the family of God through Jesus.

And when Jesus reconciles you to God and adopts you into the family

he redeems everything in your life. Nothing is wasted.

Nothing can derail the sovereign grace of God in Christ.

In Genesis 50 Joseph tells his brothers that even when people do evil things

and mean it for evil—brothers, even though you’ve done me evil,

and meant it for evil, God means it for good.

And if God decides something will be good then eventually it will be good.

And Paul says in Romans 8 that in all things God works for the good of those who

love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

God works it out. All things. Incest. Out of wedlock births.

Drunkenness. Untimely deaths. Chaos. Dysfunctional families.

What can come from all that mess? Jesus can come from that!

You may say, but you don’t understand my mess.

You don’t know what I’ve done. I’m a Lot.

If you could see my compromises and failures, the harm I have done my family.

Get saved, and get a new life. Get forgiveness and a fresh start.

Get the Holy Spirit who will live in you and change you from the inside out.

If you’re a Christian, rededicate your life this morning.

Be filled afresh with the Holy Spirit and keep in step with him.

But You don’t know what I’ve been through. You don’t know my family tree.

I had a father like Lot, I had other adults in my life

who didn’t nurture me spiritually and protect me morally.

I was sinned against and I responded with my own sin,

and now I’m living with those scars.

Get saved and get a new dad. Get a heavenly Father who is loving and tender.

Get an elder brother Jesus who will always be there for you,

and who will help you turn your scars into gold of wisdom and humility.

If you’ve wandered from him come back to him.

He loves you and wants the best for

I said a moment ago that there is no hope in this story—

humanly speaking that’s absolutely true. It’s a hopeless legacy of sin.

But heavenly speaking, there is hope in this story for all of us.

If God can bring salvation to this family—then he can save you and me.

And like Ruth and her descendants after her, you can experience

a fresh start and a new life in the family of God.

And old hymn says:

The Lord forsaketh not His flock, His chosen generation.

He is their Refuge and their Rock, Their peace and their salvation.

As with a mother’s tender hand, He leads His own, His chosen band—

To God all praise and glory!

Then come before His presence now, And banish fear and sadness,

To your Redeemer pay your vow, And sing with joy and gladness.

Though great distress my soul befell, The Lord my God did all things well—

To God all praise and glory!

That is our God.

A God of sovereign grace who does all things well for his people.