Genesis 19:30-38
Lot's Legacy

A darker, more sinister retelling of the story of Noah. Noah had been brought through the judgment waters of God. And afterwards he had confessed that it was not his own righteousness which had saved him; for he offered sacrifice to God, confessing his sin and need for forgiveness. He had shown that sinfulness, making wine and becoming drunk and lying naked in his tent. In that condition his son Ham had seen him and mocked, but his sons Japheth and Shem had covered over his iniquity without looking upon his sin.

Again, we have a righteous man, Lot, surrounded by the ungodly. Again, the righteous man escapes God’s judgment and is brought into a post-apocalyptic world. Again, we realize that the judgment of God has not succeeded in destroying all sin and leaving only righteousness, for in the very recipient of God’s salvation—Noah then, Lot now—the seeds of sin are preserved. And again the object of salvation becomes drunk and his nakedness is violated by his offspring.

But how much more vulgar and terrible is the tale this time around. Lot not wanting to leave Sodom, pleading for a corner of the world that was to remain his. His wife turning back, yearning for her about-to-be destroyed home, confessed a heart of unbelief and shared the fate of her countrymen in Sodom. And now Lot becomes drunk, not by his own hand as Noah, but by the scheming of his daughters. His nakedness is violated not merely by offspring who ridicule, but by offspring who incestuously use him. And this time there are no other offspring to rebuke these daughters of Sodom and to cover their father’s shame. He remains a shamed man to the day of his death.

This is the legacy of a man who loved the world more than the promises of God, who raised his daughters with the values of Sodom rather than the values of the Promised Land, who even in the day of judgment lingered in the place of sin and could not bear to leave until he was yanked away by angels.  

1. The Reduction of Lot to Poverty (30)
   1. Lot Dwells in the Mountains (30a)
      1. He was afraid to dwell in Zoar (30b)
      2. In the day of judgment he’d been afraid not to dwell in Zoar
         1. He’d begged and whined, saying, "See, is it not a little place? Let me live there."
         2. And God had relented of his command to Lot to flee to the mountains; he had agreed to preserve Zoar despite the fact that it deserved judgment just as much as Sodom and Gomorrah
         3. So Lot was able to retain a sliver of the world he so much loved, the world of sin and wickedness.
      3. And now he’s scared to live in it
         1. After all, what prevents God from destroying Zoar with the destruction it deserves.
         2. He was too weak in faith to trust the Lord when he told him "Flee to the mountains!" Now he’s too weak in faith to trust the Lord who had relented and agreed to spare Zoar.
         3. As well, he is afraid of the inhabitants of Zoar, for they are no different from the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah.
         4. Will they not come and attempt to violate him and his daughters?
         5. Will they not take out their wrath upon him as a man of righteousness when they learn that the God who destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah around them had preserved him?
         6. What was he thinking when he asked for a portion of this wickedness to be preserved?
            1. He had not been like Abraham, pleading for mercy on behalf of this city
            2. He had been selfishly pleading for himself: preserve somewhere, O God, where I can continue to live as I lived in Sodom.
            3. But now, having seen the furious judgment of God upon his former residence, he fears to live among such people in the shadow of such wrath. So he flees
      4. Ironically, he flees to the mountains
         1. God told him "flee to the mountains!"
         2. He whines, "No! Give me a city."
         3. God says, "Have a city, then."
         4. And Lot panics and flees to the mountains.
      5. Does he yet get the point?
         1. How foolish to be wiser than God
         2. How useless to try to hang onto what God has devoted to destruction
         3. Why not put the whole world behind him and set his face toward the Promised Land?
         4. Even now would not his uncle Abraham receive him with open arms and offer him a part in the covenant God had made with Abraham, a covenant made in Lot’s absence?
         5. It has been said the he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. Lot is a fool.
         6. He is your basic example of how not to approach judgment day, having a treasure hear on earth, regretting its loss, and trying vainly to retain some part of it.
         7. What a contrast to Abraham, living also in mountains to the west of Lot, across the Red Sea, in prosperity. He had lost nothing in the day he saw the smoke of God’s judgment rising up from the plains of wickedness. His treasure was in the land of God’s promise. Everything he had survived unscathed.
   2. Lot Dwells in a Cave (30c)
      1. How is the mighty one fallen!
      2. He does not dwell with great wealth in the mountains as Abraham
      3. Rather he lives as a cave man; all he owned is lost.
      4. How rich he had been in that day when he chose Sodom as his inheritance! (Recap story)
      5. But he put all that treasure in a world that was passing away.
      6. We have a tendency sometimes to look at Biblical stories too moralistically rather than seeing them as focused on Christ.
      7. But this story has a moral and we’d be blind not to see it
         1. It’s a Christ-centered, Christ-focused moral, naturally
         2. But it is a moral
         3. Do not lay up your treasure on earth where moth and rust corrupt…. But seek first the kingdom of God
         4. 2 Pe 3:11ff. — Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of persons ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, ¹² waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire? ¹³ But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.
2. The Perversity of Lot’s Daughters
   1. Their False Dilemma
      1. We don’t have any offspring
      2. And there’s no prospect of a husband for either of us
      3. Lot had engaged his daughters to a couple of Sodomites, but those days are over, their prospective husbands slain with all of Sodom by the hand of God.
      4. They are truly daughters of their father Lot
         1. As he loved this world so do they
         2. And they desire to perpetuate themselves, their family, their name through the production of children.
         3. This childbearing they desire is not the childbirth that the faithful have desired since the time of Eve.
         4. Since Eve, the faithful have born children in hope: the Seed of the woman will crush the serpent’s head, will repeal the curse, will regain paradise and fellowship with God.
         5. But Lot’s daughters want a seed so they may have a portion in this world, rather than as an expression of their hope in the world to come.
      5. Remember, the tale of Lot is a parenthesis in the tale of Abraham
         1. We are meant to see Lot in this perspective as one who fails to measure up to Abraham’s faith to his own destruction
         2. To the west, in the Promised Land, Abraham and Sarah are reverently, passionately waiting for the miraculous birth, the promised son Isaac who will be a picture of Christ, the Savior of the world.
         3. They have already gone down the route of trying to raise up a seed by their own power
            1. Sarah is barren, and nothing they did could change that
            2. Abraham went in to his handmaiden Hagar — at Sarah’s insistence — and father a child by her. An attempt to raise up a seed by his own strength.
            3. But God rejected that seed and clarified his promise: Abraham’s heir would be the offspring of his own body through Sarah.
            4. And now, in faith, they wait.
      6. Why did Lot’s daughters not migrate back to the Promised Land?
         1. Why did they not know that the important seed, the crucial one was the child of the promise who would be given to Abraham?
         2. Why did they not know that they could go barren all their lives and still rejoice as mother’s of many children if only this seed could be born to Abraham — this seed from whom the Christ would come — and they could put their hope in him?
         3. Why did they not go to Abraham to wait in faith with him?
         4. Because they are Lot’s daughters and he has taught them that the world is more important than the promise, the flesh more important than the Spirit.
         5. What is Abraham’s son to them? they want kids of their own!
      7. Their problem is not that they don’t have offspring
         1. What good to bear children into this world of sin, destined for the judgment of God (as so recently had been demonstrated)?
         2. What point in giving life to children destined for death?
      8. Their problem is that Abraham doesn’t have an offspring
         1. Abraham, with whom God has made covenant
         2. Abraham, in whom all the families of the earth would be blessed if only this child could be born.
      9. Their problem is they don’t have any part in the covenant God has made with Abraham.
      10. Mistaking their problem, they mistake the solution.
   2. Their Sodom-Like Solution
      1. the solution to their problem is incest
      2. The story is told matter-of-factly
         1. Not so you should take the sin lightly as of no great consequence
         2. But so you can see how far down the path of moral decay they’ve gone
         3. This slimy, filthy, disgusting, depraved sin; this violation of the ordinance of creation that children should leave their parents to cleave to their spouses; this is what they conceive of as a practical solution to a practical problem. (So much for practical application [Ok, Dave, I’m not really going to say that])
      3. Lot’s sins are being visited upon his head
         1. Back in Sodom, with the townsmen beating on his door, he had cried out in desperation to protect his guests: "Look, I have two daughters who have not known a 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."
         2. He had offered to violate them, their marital status, their femininity.
         3. Now they in turn are violating him in the same way he had offered to have them violated.
         4. He had betrothed them to men of Sodom and now they are carrying out a sin worthy of Sodom
      4. They have even "improved" on Lot’s sins
         1. He has taught them to be sinful, but not this sinful
         2. They know he would never agree to their wicked plans
         3. So they conspire to get him drunk and then to commit their repulsive act.
      5. As we said, it is like the tale of Noah, only darker and more ugly
         1. For it was understood when Noah was saved it was because of his righteousness.
            1. And although Noah was not truly without sin
            2. Yet by faith in Christ, the promised Seed, he was righteous in God’s eyes
            3. And so he had the immense privilege of ushering in a new creation (not the new creation, but his work is still a picture of the work of Christ in this respect)
            4. He became, then, a picture of the savior of the world
               1. passing through the judgment waters just as Christ would pass through judgment on the cross
               2. being "resurrected" in a picture when he came out of that coffin-like ark, having survived God’s judgment
               3. What a privilege!
            5. And thus upon him the hope of the world came to rest.
            6. Although he was not the promised Seed, yet through him the promised Seed would come
         2. These cheerful, joyful, hopeful notes are completely absent from this depressing story.
         3. Lot is hardly righteous except by comparison with the Sodomites.
         4. And he is really only righteous because of Abraham’s mediation on his behalf
         5. Is this the man we want surviving the judgment and entering a new creation?
         6. Is this how we pictured it, living in the new creation in poverty in a cave?
         7. Is this how we wanted the seed to come, through damnable incest?
         8. Happily, the hope of the world has not come to rest on Lot.
         9. The seed he bears is not the promised One
         10. And this sorry existence is not a picture of what it means to set the world behind you and find your treasure in the new creation
      6. Abraham the (failed) mediator
         1. Abraham was successful in one respect—Lot’s life was preserved.
         2. Yet in another respect, he simply makes you hunger for the true mediator, the seed of Abraham, Christ Jesus.
         3. For what is Lot’s condition after he is "saved"?
            1. Is he brought into the Promised Land as Christ brings us into heaven?
            2. Is he made into the image of faithful Abraham as we are conformed to the image of Christ?
            3. The existence for which Lot is "saved" is hardly worth living
            4. And as a man of many sins and persistent unbelief how saved is he?
            5. Is this the best that mediation can do? To save the lives of the wretched and leave them wretched?
            6. What good is such a salvation if Christ preserves our lives only to leave us in our sins, living in a world destined to perish?
            7. Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift?
3. The Troublesome Result
   1. The Shameless Names of Moab and Ben-Ammi
      1. Moab = From the father
      2. Ben-Ammi = Son of my people
      3. It’s as though Lot’s daughters are bragging about the shameful origin of their sons; they’re flaunting their sin in the very names they give their offspring
      4. Like their father, they have become senseless to their sin and unbelief
      5. Let all fathers beware to present such an example of unbelief to their children
         1. rather confess your sins daily before God and your children
         2. and point them always to the true Seed, to Christ
         3. lest your iniquities be visited upon your children and multiplied in them and since you are unashamed of your own sins, you live to be ashamed of theirs.
   2. The Future of Moab and Ben-Ammi
      1. Rather than traveling to the Promised Land to put his faith in the child of promise, Lot has in unbelief fathered nations that will be a trouble to the children of that child of promise, the children of Israel.
      2. Moab
         1. Israel in the Exodus will seek permission to pass through their land on their way to Canaan. They will be denied.
         2. The Lord in that day will pass judgment against Moab, excluding them forever from Israel
         3. As Israel prepares to cross the Jordan, they will camp in the plains of Moab
            1. they will be seduced to fornication by the Moabite women
            2. And they will sacrifice to Baal the god of the Moabites
            3. This is the legacy of unbelief and carnal sin
         4. The Moabites and Ammonites together will raid Israel in the days of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah
         5. In the days of Elisha, the Moabites will raid again.
         6. Rather than seeking their portion in the Promised Land, they seek to overthrow the rightful inhabitants. Sons of the devil, they seek to storm the kingdom of heaven and take it by force.
      3. Ben-Ammi à Ammon
         1. With Moab, the Ammonites will hire Balaam to curse Israel in the days of the exodus
         2. They will join with Moab to subdue Israelite territory in the days of the Judges; God will have to deliver his people from their hand.
         3. Solomon will include Ammonite women in his harem. And just as Lot’s daughters seduced him, so Solomon will be seduced by these daughters of Ammon to serve false gods, destroying the nation of Israel.
         4. About 800 bc, Zabad and Jehozabad, both sons of an Ammonitess, will conspire to slay Joash king of Judah
         5. Right up until the fall of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. and beyond, they will attack, pester, and trouble God’s chosen people.
      4. What a legacy of wickedness and unbelief!
      5. What trouble could have been avoided if only Lot had acted in faith!
      6. Lot has confirmed himself as a man of wickedness and unbelief.
         1. He has shunned every opportunity to believe the promises of God, and therefore he walks off the edge of the page at this point into another, redemptively irrelevant story.
         2. Lot is never mentioned again.
         3. His death goes unrecorded
      7. Yet God can redeem even this
         1. Centuries later, a woman from the land of Moab, Ruth, will repent of the sins of her ancestors, of Lot and his daughter.
         2. She will renounce her citizenship in Moab and come to the Promised Land to serve the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
         3. She will marry Boaz and give birth to a child, a promised seed like Isaac the seed of Abraham.
         4. She will give birth to Obed, Obed to Jesse, Jesse to David.
         5. And from David will come Jesus, the son of David, the savior who had mercy on us all.

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