Read Genesis 19:30-38
Questions from the Scripture text: Where does Lot go, and with whom in Genesis 19:30? Whom have we recently heard about drinking so much wine that he lost his awareness, and great sin was committed by his children (cf. Genesis 9:20-28)? To whom does that happen now (Genesis 19:31-36)? What results from this in Genesis 19:37-38?What a disaster! We are reminded once again that the wickedness and guilt for which the entire world will be condemned is yet alive and dangerous within the hearts and lives of believers.
For the second time in the book of Genesis, God has saved someone from a great judgment. For the second time, that person whom the Lord has saved allows himself to get drunk with wine—a great sin, in that God has given us to be ruled by knowledge of Him, and to be reasonable creatures, but drunkenness takes away this faculty and leaves us to our passions and impulses. Lot, of whom Scripture tells us that his soul was tormented by the sin of Sodom every day, is brought into that very sin through drunkenness!
Of course, he has set himself up for such sin. He valued earthly wealth over being joined with Abram. And then he moved further and further into the city. We do not know anything of a wife before he comes to Sodom, so it is quite possible that he has taken a wife from Sodom—especially since she looks back after they had returned to safety. He has brought his daughters up in Sodom, and then he has promised them in marriage to two men from Sodom.
Even if one can, perhaps, take such worldly-conditioned children out of the world to some extent, he cannot take the worldliness out of the children. This is one reason why God’s plan of gathering the redeemed into an accountable, worshiping, discipling community is so merciful and necessary!
But Lot cuts off himself and his family from such a community. He is rightly afraid to be surrounded by the people of Zoar, but when he goes up to the mountains and the cave, rather than returning to Abraham, he sets himself and his daughters up for this great wickedness. And it is a wickedness that will afflict the people of God for generations to come, as the Moabites and Ammonites come from it.
Yet, look at the marvelous mercy of God! Ruth the Moabitess will one day choose, by God’s grace, to leave her people and her gods to be joined to the Lord’s people and to the Lord Himself, the one true God. Indeed, she will become an ancestor of the One in whom we may be forgiven, the One to whom we may be conformed, the One who takes those whom He justifies and then sanctifies them, transforming them by the renewing of their minds.
This text may be a cautionary tale to all of us about the sin that still remains, but it is also pointing us to Him who removes all guilt at His cross, gathers us into the community of His saints, and proceeds to conform us to His own perfect Self through His Spirit’s use of His means. Praise be to the Lord Jesus Christ!
How do you seek to be transformed by the renewing of your mind? What must you avoid?Suggested songs: ARP1 “How Blessed the Man” or TPH433 “Amazing Grace”
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