10 May The Disgusting Downfall of Lot
Genesis 19:32 – “Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve offspring from our father.”
In the closing account of Genesis 19:30-38, we then witness one of the most troubling and bizarre stories in all of Scripture. There, the story of Lot closely resembles the story of Noah. After being spared widespread judgment that rained down from Heaven, both Noah and Lot get drunk and end up naked and passed out.
After seeing God destroy Sodom and Gomorrah for sexual sin, and after God spared Lot though he sought to also commit sexual sin by offering to hand his two virgin daughters over to a crowd of perverted men plotting assault, Lot actually impregnated both of his own daughters, too drunk and passed out to even know what they were doing to him.
After seeing the devastation that God brought to Sodom and Gomorrah and not trusting that God would protect him as he already had once, Lot moved into the mountains to live alone in a cave with his daughters. Lot had no wife, as she had died when she looked back on Sodom and was turned into a pillar of salt, and the girls had no husbands, as they were living alone with their father.
Thinking the end of the world had come, fearing they would never get pregnant, the girls got their father drunk and had sex with him. The sons they bore by their own father were the heads of the Moabite and Ammonite races that later became bitter enemies of God’s people (e.g. Numbers 23-25; 2 Kings 3).
Lot is morally culpable for the incest because he is apparently a very poor head of his family. In Genesis 19:14, Lot’s sons-in-law-to-be laughingly mocked him when he told them that God was going to judge the sin in their town and his two daughters conspire to usurp his headship. Lot foolishly raised his daughters in Sodom, and they grow up to be sexually perverse, which is, in large part, their father’s fault because he led them into this perversion and destruction.
The daughters have apparently learned to share his sexual disrespect for them as they agree that getting their father drunk, having sex with him, and bearing his children is a good idea. Additionally, the girls share the values of the world and not the Lord, (Genesis 19:31) which they learned growing up in the sinfully sick city of Sodom, which Lot chose for them. The point is painfully clear – if believers raise their children in the world, their children will grow up immoral, confused, and perverted. Not only did this family live in Sodom, but Sodom lived in them and went with them as they fled from the destruction of Sodom to keep acting like Sodomites.
The theological point of this story is that Lot was no more of a righteous man than the other men who perished in Sodom. But, through Abraham, Lot was given grace and spared the wrath of God. And while we may protest God’s sparing of Lot, the point is very simply that, if God were not gracious, everyone on the earth would end up going the way of Sodom.
But, in time, God uses what was evil for good as only He can. Eventually, out of the lineage of the godless Moabite race will come a woman named Ruth, and subsequently Jesus Christ (Ruth 4:18-22; Matthew 1:5).
What wisdom can parents and children glean from the story of Lot and his daughters?
To help you study the book of Genesis with us, check out the second of three free e-book study guides here.
To get daily devos sent texted to you Monday-Friday, text DEVOTIONS to 99383. Click here to find the sermon series that accompanies this devotional series.
