Finishing Un-Well

Finishing Un-Well

Genesis 19:30-38

Open your Bible to Genesis 19

In the fall of 2001, an important book was released by Robert Gundry, New Testament scholar and scholar-in-residence at Westmont College, with the intimidating title Jesus the Word According to John the Sectarian: A Paleofundamentalist Manifesto for Contemporary Evangelicalism, Especially Its Elites, in North America.

I imagine that the publisher didn’t choose this title, but that it was at the author’s insistence. Titles like this do not sell books, though this may well be the exception.

In clearest terms his argument is this:

The instincts of early fundamentalism were right in its attempt to maintain theological orthodoxy and separation from the world, but it was sidetracked by the fundamentalism of the twenties and forties into a shallow separatism.

And, therefore, what is needed today is a new old fundamentalism that is in line with the paleofundamentalism of John’s Gospel that while being in the world is morally separated from the world and that unashamedly preaches the gospel.

Dr. Gundry states his concern in very specific terms:

The “seeker sensitivity” of evangelicals—their practice of suiting the gospel to the felt needs of people, primarily the bourgeoisie—contributes to their numerical success but can easily sow the seeds of worldliness (broadly conceived).

How so? Well, in a society such as ours where people do not feel particularly guilty before God (though in fact they are), seeker-sensitivity—if consistently carried through—will soft-pedal the preaching of salvation from sin, for such preaching would not meet a felt need of people.

As a result, the gospel message of saving, sanctifying grace reduces to a gospel massage of physical, psychological, and social well-being that allows worldliness to flourish.

By worldliness Gundry means “not merely the disregard of fundamentalist taboos against smoking, drinking, dancing, movie-going, gambling and the like, but more expansively such matters as materialism, pleasure-seeking, indiscriminate enjoyment of salacious and violent entertainment, immodesty of dress, voyeurism, sexual laxity, and divorce.”

Who can deny that this is modern evangelicalism—that materialism doesn’t grip the church—that pleasure-seeking is not common among us—that evangelicals don’t watch the same things as everyone else—that modesty hasn’t been minimized—and that divorce isn’t on the rise?

Know for certain that what is not needed today is a massage, but rather the disquieting message of a believer who finished un-well.

As we saw in our study of the destruction of Sodom, if we only had the Old Testament, we would never have imagined that Lot was a true believer. But 2 Peter chapter 2 three times tells us that this conflicted, compromised little man was “righteous,” and that he was distressed and tormented by life in Sodom. Ironically, though Lot was revolted by Sodom, Sodom was in his soul. It is possible, then, to be distressed by the world while hanging on to it for dear life.

Let’s pray and we’ll read our text.

Pray!

Genesis 19:30–38 ESV

Now Lot went up out of Zoar and lived in the hills with his two daughters, for he was afraid to live in Zoar. 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 in to 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 firstborn bore 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-ammi. He is the father of the Ammonites to this day.

The first thing we see is:

Lot’s Descent

The Genesis account gives us a subtly crafted portrait of Lot.

Lot had left Ur as part of Abram’s faithful entourage and trekked the full eight hundred miles to Canaan. But with the passing of time, he perceptibly removed himself from God’s grasp, allowing the fingers of Sodom to close ever tighter around his shaking soul.

Given his choice of land by Abram, he gave in to the lures of the Jordan Valley, pitching his tents “as far as Sodom.” next living “in Sodom.” and finally “sitting in the gate of Sodom.”

Lot was entrenched in Sodom and had become a prominent man in that wicked city.

Lot proved himself incompetent and impotent during the commotion over his angel-guests—offering his daughters to appease the Sodomites and hesitating at the angels’ call to flee so that they had to grasp his family’s hands while he whined to be exempted from fleeing to the mountains so he could take refuge in the nearby mini-Sodom, Zoar.

Then, entrenched in Zoar, he didn’t trust the implied divine guarantee of safety. Consumed by fears, he fled with his two daughters to the mountains of the Dead Sea and became a cave-dweller.

“When a man is out of the will of God, he is haunted by the bogeys of his own imagination” (Barnhouse). Perhaps Lot feared reprisals from his new neighbors or trembled at the thought of another earthquake.

It is intriguing that he didn’t return to the tents of Abraham, where he surely would have been welcome. Perhaps this was due to shame. Or maybe even pride. Fear and depression can cloud judgment. Maybe he projected his own sinful delusions upon his godly uncle. However, it was, the cave was more than metaphorical of his descent.

Lot and his daughters lived in dark isolation in the musty, dank chambers of a cave. Caves were often used as tombs. Abraham purchased a cave in Machpelah for Sarah’s tomb and was later buried there himself.

Spiritually entombed, Lot lived a degenerated, death-like existence, sinking into ever deeper depression and corruption.

We see Lot’s descent and next:

The Daughters’ Descent

Lot’s corruption had consequences for his family because we read,

31 And the firstborn said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is not a man on earth to come in to us after the manner of all the earth.

32 Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve offspring from our father.”

Incest was considered wrong in Near-Eastern culture. And Hebrew culture explicitly forbade a man’s having relations with his daughters or daughters-in-law (Leviticus 20:12; Ezekiel 22:10, 11). The penalty for such sin was death (Leviticus 20:11–13). Mesopotamian culture similarly forbade such incest in the Code of Hammurabi.

Likewise, Hittite laws forbade such sins, punishing them either by death or banishment and, later, by paying a fine and sending an animal out of the town bearing the guilt on the analogy of Israel’s scapegoat.

Based on all of the evidence, I think that father-daughter incest was an aberration even in the Dead Sea cultures of Sodom and Gomorrah—and that Lot’s daughters knew very well for it to be sinful.

Some who read the account argue that the story was handed down from the Moabites and Ammonites as a record of their mothers’ heroic actions, thus seeing the sisters’ act as comparable to that of Tamar with her father-in-law Judah. Such an interpretation is a stretch, although it does correctly emphasize that the seduction was motivated by economic desires and not by perverted sensuality.

Lot’s daughters sought the social security that only children could provide. But in contrast to the Tamar-Judah episode, Lot was the girls’ flesh-and-blood father! And more, the fact that they had to get their father drunk to do it shows that they were abusing moral conventions.

Besides, though the phrase “lie with” may sound like an innocent euphemism, it is unusual for it to be used except to describe illicit relationships or desperation. Also, the girls’ names being withheld implies disapproval. Lot’s daughters sinned intentionally.

There is Lot’s and His daughter’s descent which leads us to:

Mutual Descent

Lot’s descent and his daughters’ descent coalesced in an act of mutual degeneration.

33 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.

34 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.”

35 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.

This is dark. The deeds took place at night in a cave. There couldn’t be a darker context on earth.

It is evident that Lot’s life choices had promoted his daughters’ absorbing of the spirit of Sodom into their souls. Life in Sodom had repeatedly demonstrated before his daughters’ eyes how wine and sensuality worked together—weakening a man’s inhibitions so that he was capable of anything. Deception, of course, was a way of life in Sodom. And Lot was part of it. But his deception was so spiritually charged and therefore so domestically lethal.

Inwardly he was “distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked” and was “tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds,” says Peter (2 Peter 2:7, 8). But outwardly he said little or nothing as he became a prominent man in town. Frankness would have jeopardized his standing. Lot had mastered the craft of turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to the social and sexual abuses of Sodom.

He didn’t do them. He didn’t approve of them. But he didn’t speak out against them. Blasphemies and filthy speech were met by Lot’s benign smile and deft deflection.

His daughters saw his spineless character that so shrewdly masked what he really thought. Lot the survivor was a master. His girls could not forget that he had offered them in order to appease the men of Sodom in a monstrous betrayal of fatherly duty.

So, when the successive father-daughter seductions took place, his girls used the craft he had given them. It was his wine, his deceit, his betrayal mixed together and served in an infamous cup in the depths of the cave. Their dishonor of him was brilliant—because with cruel irony he himself carried out the shameful act he had first suggested to the men of Sodom.

Lot had effectively allowed Sodom into his daughters’ souls.

And understand this: Lot was drunk, but Lot was guilty for what he did. Unconscious drunks cannot do what Lot did. As one commentator says, the words “He did not know” (Genesis 19:33) do not affirm that he was in an unconscious state—“they merely mean, that in his intoxicated state, though not entirely unconscious, yet he lay with his daughters, without clearly knowing what he was doing.”

In the morning he did not recall what he had done. But he was guilty, just as any father would be today. Alcohol was no excuse. Lot’s drunkenness simply facilitated the working out of the dark side of his own heart.

While the Bible does not forbid wine, it repeatedly warns of its abuse. The parallels with Noah’s drunkenness in the final episode of his life are so clear. But here is the greatest lesson: At the conclusion of the two narratives of divine judgment (one the flood and the other judgment in the destruction of Sodom), those who had been spared God’s wrath (Noah and Lot) succumbed to sins similar to those who died in the judgments.

And here we witness the rebirth of Sodom in the cave. Sodom was alive and well in “righteous” Lot’s family. And he was the father of it all!

Lot’s Descendants

The story’s conclusion carries the last mention of Lot in the Old Testament. He is of no further importance to the history of salvation. His death receives no mention. So much for the “righteous” man who was sucked into the world.

Here is the end:

36 Thus both the daughters of Lot became pregnant by their father.

37 The firstborn bore a son and called his name Moab. He is the father of the Moabites to this day.

38 The younger also bore a son and called his name Ben-ammi. He is the father of the Ammonites to this day.

The names the daughters gave their sons immortalized Lot’s paternity. “Moab” is based on the Hebrew, “from [my] father.” And “Ben-ammi” means literally, “son of my [paternal] kinsman.” The Moabites inhabited the territory between the Arnon and the Zered Rivers east of the Dead Sea. And the Ammonites were located generally in the eastern part of the same region between the Jabbok and the Arnon.

Here we need to understand that this account and its designations didn’t give rise to Israel’s national hatred of the Moabites and Ammonites, nor was it placed here to stigmatize those tribes. Their origin wasn’t held against them. Deuteronomy regarded their territories as God-given and affirmed the right of these peoples to live peaceably in their homelands.

Deuteronomy 2:9 ESV

And the Lord said to me, ‘Do not harass Moab or contend with them in battle, for I will not give you any of their land for a possession, because I have given Ar to the people of Lot for a possession.’

Deuteronomy 2:19 ESV

And when you approach the territory of the people of Ammon, do not harass them or contend with them, for I will not give you any of the land of the people of Ammon as a possession, because I have given it to the sons of Lot for a possession.’

Deuteronomy also tells us that it was the Moabites’ and Ammonites’ later inhospitality to the wandering Israelites that brought the animosity. The king of Moab’s enlistment of Balaam to curse Israel did ultimately eventuate in the carnal seduction of Israel.

But it should also be remembered that King David and ultimately the Messiah was descended from Ruth the Moabite, as told in Ruth 4. Today every Jew and Gentile can become a true son or daughter of Abraham through Christ.

Lot’s immortal folly was this:

Though the worldliness of Sodom irritated his righteous soul, he lived as close to the world as he could, hanging on to it for dear life until the bitter end. And the result was that though God judged all of Sodom except Lot and his daughters, Sodom was reborn in their very lives.

So, we see that it is possible for believing people like us who are truly distressed by the course of this world to live lives that are so profoundly influenced by culture that Sodom is reborn in the lives of those we love the most.

The enticements to yield to this syndrome have never been more powerful than they are right now because of our prosperity, cyber-options, and the powers of the media. And these are important days politically, culturally, and spiritually. And we’re the only ones who can do anything about it. And we have to!

God help us if while we’re complaining about sin in the world, we are running headfirst after it because we won’t deny ourselves. What are some of the things we need to be concerned about?

Materialism

Whether we’re wealthy or not, we must say no to materialism. We know it’s bad. But we’re not saying no when we deny nothing to ourselves. We’re not saying no when we give our children whatever they want—if they pester us long enough. And we’re not saying no if our giving does not affect our lifestyles. We simply must not be worldly materialists who are only offended by those whose lifestyles are more extravagant than ours. We must say no! We must not participate in Lot’s folly.

Pleasure-seeking

Nothing is more despotic than pleasure-seeking, and few things control our families more than pleasure. Certainly, we must know how to abound. And as Christians in a sense our pleasures are more acute. But to determine our actions by a desire for the greatest pleasure is to surrender to Hell—and to bring the ways of Hell on our children. Lot could never say no—even in that dark cave. We must.

Entertainment

Despite what you might think, we become what we focus on in the same way that we are what we eat. We need to take control of what kind of media we consume. We need to be concerned over what kind of television we watch and where we get our information. Today is the day that we need to say no and take control of what we take in.

The example for all of life is our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus came into the world and therefore engaged it. Jesus sanctified himself and thus (unlike Lot) separated himself from it. Jesus explained God and therefore preached the gospel.

If we look to Christ for our example and strength to live as we ought, we will finish well.