Take Two: Genesis 19, Proverbs 10

Genesis 19 reads like a bad soap opera. The place in view is Sodom, the city which God declared exceedingly wicked in the previous chapter. Abraham had negotiated (he thought) to have the city spared if only 10 righteous people could be found to live within. The destruction of the city in this chapter demonstrates the widespread wickedness. Only Lot demonstrated any sense of righteousness (through the display of hospitality- Gen 19:2-3). Don't get me wrong...Lot was not righteous...but his act of hospitality mirrored that of Abraham's in the previous chapter. The intent of the author here is clearly seen by implication.

In Gen 19:2, the angels attempt to rebuff the invite to stay with Lot. This makes me smile a bit because I learned this cultural nuance by committing a faux pas in Egypt last year. I was with some men visiting with an Egyptian who offered us some tea. We did not want tea...but we wanted to have a conversation with the man, so to be polite...we accepted. The man was surprised but very cordial and hospitable. He directed an employee to find a table, chairs, and make tea to serve us in his store. We thought it was a bit much...but wrote it off to being an "Egyptian" thing. After our tea, we left and on the way home, my friend who lived there told us that he had forgotten that (cuturally speaking) we were supposed to refuse the tea. If the man really wanted us to have tea together, he would have pressed the issue. We looked like goofy Westerners by accepting the invitation for hospitality on the first invite.

Once the angels were in Lot's home, the men of the city (all of them) surrounded the house and demanded the angels (strangers who they thought were men) be delivered over for a homosexual relationship with the group (Gen 19:4-5). Lot tried to refuse and even offered his own two daughters instead (who were virgins but engaged to be married (Gen 19:6,14). The men of the city tried to overtake Lot and his home when the angels struck them with blindness. The men groped around but could not find the door to come in. (A supernatural intervention to say the least).

The angels announced the coming judgment (Gen 19:12-13) and directed Lot to gather his family and leave. His warning of the coming judgment sounded incredulous to his sons-in-law who laughed it off (Gen 19:14). Lot did gather his wife and two daughters (4 people in all) and fled with the urging of the angels (Gen 19:15-17). The angels directed Lot to the mountains to flee. Lot hesitated and asked to be allowed to go to Zoar (a small town to the East) instead and his request was granted. He ended up being so afraid though, that he went to the mountains ultimately and lived in a cave with his two daughters (Gen 19:30).

Was Lot righteous in all of this? No. It is because of Abraham (Gen 19:29) that Lot was spared. Only a glimmer of Lot's heritage remained (as was implied in his hospitality). Lot's wife was destroyed in the escape because she looked back. This is not a "glance over the shoulder" kind of looking back. She had come to long for that which God had judged and was destroying. Even with the incredible circumstances of her escape (Gen 19:16-17), she was enamored with the life in Sodom.

This section of Genesis is one of the scariest and most sobering of all to me. I look at the anti-God nature of Sodom and I see many aspects of our culture today. The rampant infatuation with self-pleasure and the lack of regard for God. The lack of awareness and acceptance of the warnings of God. I am greatly aware that the people of Sodom were culturally acclimated to this rampant unrighteousness over a period of time. The culture had even come to affect Lot and his family after prolonged contact with it.

Without OUR redemptive voice pointing people to God, all culture will slip further down the slippery slope of Sodom. We will begin to explain everything without a reference point of God. We will marginalize godly righteousness and define pleasure and success by our standards and not his. This is why it is so important to be the voice of righteousness in our homes, workplaces, and our culture. To simply acquiesce to a cultural view that righteousness is self-defined and open to personal interpretation, is to doom the generation to judgment in mammoth proportions.

The final section (Gen 19:30-38) is disgusting and etiological (explains how something came to be). Lot's daughters, afraid that they will have no descendents of their own, get their father drunk and have sex with him, hoping to become pregnant with a descendent themselves. Abraham and Sarai had no physical descendents and trusted God. Lot would have no physical descendents...but his daughters chose to take care of this problem without God. The results were two son (one born to each daughter) who were the fathers to the Moabites and the Ammonites...two notorious enemies of God's people (Gen 19:36-38).

Proverbs 10:12 is the takeaway today. This verse struck me today. Hatred turns attention to all trangressions. Love covers transgressions. If a matter of transgression occurs, it is right to deal with the transgression, either directly with the offender...or with God (by releasing the trangression to the Lord). Love forgives and acts in this way. Hate (at least one expression of it) is seen when a person wants to bring to light a trangression which is addressed so that all may see it. The purpose in doing this (at a minimum) is to showcase ones own righteousness (look how I forgave) or to showcase the transgressor (look what they did). Love and hate are shown as opposites in this verse. Whether one loves or hates is seen by whether one conceals or reveals a transgression.

Do you and I love people and conceal transgressions that are properly dealt with?

Grace,