George Bernard Shaw wrote: “This is the true joy of life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown out on the scrap heap; being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish clod of ailments and grievances -- complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”

       Contrast Shaw’s definition of joy with the experience of Daniel Webster.  Early in his career, Webster took a solid stand against slavery.  He called it “a great political and moral evil.”  Then the possibility came along that Webster might become President of the United States.  He journeyed south.  As he spoke he began to hedge on his stand against slavery.  When the candidates were selected both North and South brushed Webster aside.  When one Southern leader was asked why, he replied, “Sir, the south never pays its slaves.”  Webster was a dejected, weary man.  Not only had he gone down in defeat, but also he bore the burden of serving inferior goals.

       This well describes Abraham’s nephew, Lot.  As we saw last week, Lot thought that he was winning Sodom.  But when push comes to shove, we discover that Sodom has won Lot for itself.

      As we saw several weeks ago before I left for vacation, the angels of God are about to destroy Sodom.  They want to rescue Lot – not for his own sake, but as verse 29 tells us, for the sake of Abraham.  As we will see, Lot himself wasn’t all that worth saving.

       The angels tell Lot to gather his family right away and get out of Dodge City.  Sodom and Gomorrah are going down and God wants Lot to be clear.  Listen to how Frederick Beuchner tells the story.

       “When the next morning arrived, Lot still hadn’t gotten out of town, and the angels were in a snit.  God had already started the countdown, and there wasn’t a moment to lose.  Lot refused to budge an inch, however, so finally in desperation the angels “seized him and his wife and his two daughters by the hand, the Lord being merciful to him, and they brought him forth and set him outside the city.”  Then they told him to flee to the hills before it was too late.

       “Lot’s response must be read to be believed.  ‘Oh no, my Lords,’ he says, “behold, your servant has found favor in your sight, and you have shown me great kindness in saving my life; but I cannot flee to the hills lest the disaster overtake me and I die.  Behold, yonder city is near enough to flee to, and it is a little one.  Let me escape there; is it not a little one? And my life will be saved.’”

       All of Lot is somehow captured in that speech.  To begin with, not so much as a passing thought is given to the imminent liquidation of all his fellow citizens.  Beyond that, he knows perfectly well that he’ll be safe in the hills or the angels would never have told him to go there -- but wilderness camping isn’t for him.

       Lot would rather be blown sky-high than leave Sodom and have to do without indoor plumbing, the morning paper delivered to the door, and the restaurants.  But he has a hunch the angels mightn’t think all that highly of cities after their recent experience in one, so he tries to wheedle them as tactfully and unobtrusively as he can.  Wouldn’t it be all right if he fled just as far as that little city over there, that tiny little bit of a one you’d hardly even notice if you weren’t looking straight at it?

       Just to get him moving, the angels gave him the nod, and by the time they’d finished giving it, he is already half way there.”

        It seems incredible that Lot argues with his rescuers, but people will often argue with those who are trying to help them.  What is really remarkable is that Lot argues so earnestly, when his life and the lives of his family members are at stake.

       Notice how he does it.   First, he bases his plea on the fact that God has already been gracious in delivering him from Sodom.  In other words, since God had been good enough to spare his life, he should now also be good enough to allow him to go on sinning.  Second, Lot reinforces his observation by the claim that he does not have the necessary physical ability to reach the mountains.  God has been gracious in sparing him from Sodom, and now Lot utterly discounts God’s ability to get him to the mountains.

      One of the questions I never asked out loud when I was young but which I wish somebody had answered anyway is: “Why can’t I sin just a little bit?”  The question really means: “Why can’t I have it both ways?  Why can’t I be a follower of Jesus Christ and also direct my own life?  Why can’t I obey God in most things but disobey from time to time when I really want to?”

       Many Christians want it both ways, especially Christian young people.  The drive is for acceptance, to be part of whatever the “in crowd” happens to be for us.

       Notice how Lot argues on the basis of the smallness of the place he wants to go to “Oh, look.  Here is a town near enough to run to, and it’s small.  Let me flee to it, it is very small, isn’t it?”  Why can’t I sin just a little bit?  It’s only a very little sin, isn’t it?”

       The essence of this prayer is that Lot is insisting on his own way.  He makes a great show of being God’s “servant,” but his prayer really is:  “Not your will, but mine be done.”

       Now, I wonder if anyone is thinking, “but what Lot wanted was not too bad, was it?  Because after all, God did let him escape to Zoar (the small town he referred to).

       If you are thinking this way, you are missing the whole point.  You see, one of the reasons why we can’t sin just a little bit is precisely that we can sin that bit.  There would be no danger if God always stepped in to stop us from doing it.  But God does not stop us.  Yes, there are ultimate limits to what God will permit.  But, nevertheless, God will let us sin.  He will let the Hebrews construct their golden calf.  He will permit David to commit adultery with Bathsheba and then murder her husband.  He will not interfere when the prodigal leaves home to squander his inheritance in a foreign country.  In the final analysis, God will allow us to do what we are committed to doing.  And we will have to bear the consequences of our actions.

       As we will see, Lot and his family do bear tremendous consequences.

       Let’s look first at Lot’s wife.  Lot may have argued, as some do, that his “little sins” were hurting no one but himself.  They’re victimless.  But now we find that his wife pays for the priorities Lot has helped teach her.

       Although Lot is listless in his response to God’s grace, at least once on the road he doesn’t look back.  It has been expressly forbidden.  But his wife turns and looks.  We are not told whether she is prompted by regret or curiosity or because her heart is tied to the lusts and pleasures of the city.  Maybe she has an unused gift card that is only valid at the Sodom Nordstrom’s.  All we know is that she deliberately shows her disregard for God at the very moment when everything depends on believing Him.

       When the buried Roman city of Pompeii was being excavated, a body was found that had been embalmed by the ashes of Vesuvius.  It was that of a woman.  Her feet were turned toward the city gate, but her face was turned backward toward something that lay just beyond her outstretched hands.  The prize for which her frozen fingers were reaching was a bag of pearls.  Maybe she had dropped them as she was fleeing for her life.  Maybe she had found them there where they had been dropped by another.  But though death was hard at her heels, and life was calling to her beyond the city gates, she could not shake off the spell of those pearls.  She had turned to pick them up, with death as her reward.  It was not the eruption of Vesuvius that made her love pearls more than life.  It only froze her like Lot’s wife in her attitude of greed.

       Science has recently taken new interest in Sodom and Gomorrah.  Ruins at the southern end of the Dead Sea are thought by many experts to be the submerged remains of these cities.  Some scientists suggest that the cities were destroyed by lightning which set fire to the tar pits that saturated the area which were mentioned back in Chapter 14.  That explanation would certainly fit the account in Genesis.

       As Lot’s wife looks back, she is perhaps caught by the flames and burns where she stands.  Her body is then encrusted with salt as the debris-laden wind blows across her.  She becomes a pillar of salt.  Later, in Luke 17:32, Jesus talks about the suddenness of judgment and says, “Remember Lot’s wife!”

       Hosea wrote of Israel in the days of their national decadence, saying that they had sowed “the wind and were to reap the whirlwind.”  This is Lot’s experience.  He has allowed little sins to form a pattern of life, and he has reaped the consequences.  There is more to come.

       Now we come to the account of how the filthy ways of the city have become part of his own daughters’ thinking.  The story is recorded in verses 30-38.  These verses contain an account of incest between Lot and his daughters.  It’s not a pretty story.

       Why is it included in the Bible?  Did Moses slip at this point and somehow record this incident apart from the Holy Spirit’s oversight of the writing of scripture?  Or did God intend the account for our knowledge and growth?

       Someone may say, “Well the account is probably all right for adults, but it isn’t for children.  It’s definitely P.G 13.”  But let me ask:  “Where would you rather have your children learn such facts of life?”  Children are going to know them sooner or later, and in our corrupt society it is probably going to be sooner rather than later.  It is far better for children to learn the facts of life from the word of God, where sin is condemned, than from dirty words on alley walls, or from lewd stories or the media.  No one can escape knowledge of sin.  But anyone can be protected from the power of sin by being taught in Christ.

       A number of writers suggest that when Lot left Zoar and settled in the mountains, he was finally doing what God had commanded.  I do not believe that was true at all.  He apparently heads east instead of west.  Abraham is west, and if Lot returns to Abraham, he will have had to admit his bad choices.  Lot does not want to do that.  So instead he takes his wine – apparently a great supply of wine - and goes in the opposite directions to drown his troubles in drink.

        With him are his two virgin daughters, the same ones Lot offered to the lust of a mob back in verse 8.  These two girls are virgins in body, but they are already debauched in mind.  They had long since grown accustomed to obscenity and unrestrained sexuality.  So up in the cave on the mountainside they seize the thinnest tissue of excuses and the story ends in drunken incest.

       The account emphasizes the birth and naming of the two children, and the two nations that come from them  The older daughter calls her son Moab.  This is a brazen act, because Moab means “from father.”  The younger daughter calls her son Ben-Ammi.  This is not quite so brazen a name but it’s the same idea.  It means “son of my people.”

       The world has always had a morbid interest in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.  Hollywood has made several films of it.  It has everything, kinky sex, violence, chariot chases, explosions.  What more could you want?

       How about some lessons?

       I am sure you have seen many lessons in this story.  But let me press home just a few of them. 

       The first is this.  The time of danger is when you first begin to choose.  Young people especially feel the pull to be like the world, wanting to be popular and to have what everyone else has, and do what everyone else does.  Many try to do exactly what Lot tried to do, compromise, so as to have both God and the world.  Both life and the scriptures teach that you cannot do both.  No person, Jesus says, can serve two masters.  No one can walk down two diverging roads at the same time.

       It is quite possible to fight your way to the top of the heap and then look back on a burned-out life, to see nothing but empty, wasted, barren years when God has offered you abundance.

       The second lesson is that when you attempt to gain the best of both worlds, you destroy others besides yourself.  What was the greatest pain in Lot’s heart when he awoke in that cave in the mountains to learn all that has happened?  Do you think it was grief over his lost wealth, his vanished honor?  Don’t you think that the greatest, deepest wound of all in Lot’s heart was the recognition of what he has done to his loved ones in Sodom, his little girls, his wife?

       This is a word to we who are parents.  We are being watched by our children.  They see our desire to be right and to do good.  But they also see if the deepest thing in our life is to “get ahead” or to enjoy pleasure.  They see if we will quickly sacrifice worship for a night out, if we are always willing to take a bigger salary, regardless of what a move may do to the family.  They see if the things we sacrifice for are not the church, or the work of God, but a new car or a bigger plasma television set or nicer furniture or a fancier vacation or a more pretentious home.  They are watching and they see all this.  They learn.

       Lot tried to raise his daughters in Sodom.  In offering them to a mob, he showed that he doesn’t value their sexuality.  So why should he expect them to value it?

       Lot reminds me of a father I knew who saw a shirt that read “Mustang Ranch Trainee”, after the Mustang Ranch brothel near Reno.  He thought it would be fun to give it to his 9-year old daughter.  I think he finally settled for one that read “future Playboy bunny.”  I wonder if he ever stopped to think about the message he was sending her about who she is as a woman.

       It’s hard to raise whole kids in Sodom.  It’s even harder when we bring Sodom into our own homes.  What do we watch on TV?  Do we provide unrestricted access to cable?  Do we send our kids to movies or watch videos without regard to the rating or the content?  What are we teaching them?

       Our lifestyle affects our children.  Where did Lot’s daughters learn to be so expedient, “There’s no one here but Dad so he’ll have to do.”  They learned it by watching their go-along, get-along father operate.  They saw his willingness to disobey God.  They saw his love for little sins.  They got the message.

       The third lesson is the most important. 

       God is still good and God is still merciful.  In fact, one of the Moabite descendents of Lot and his older daughter is a part of our spiritual bloodline.  Ruth, the ancestor of Jesus, was from Moab.  Ezekiel 47:8 even promises a time when the region of the Dead Sea will be restored.  Ezekiel 16:53 tells us that one day even “Sodom and her daughters” will be restored.

       Restoring, forgiving, healing, that’s the way God is.

       But God also gives us warnings so we don’t fall to the point of needing radical restoration.  “Remember Lot’s wife.”  Jesus says.  Let us also remember Lot’s daughters, and old Lot himself.

       Let us remember with the determination to leave for our children a legacy of hope and wholeness, so that all who learn from our example may learn to walk with the Lord.

       In the words of the Steve Green song sung earlier:  “May all who come behind us find us faithful, may the fire of our devotion light their way.  May the footprints that we leave, lead them to believe.  And the lives we live inspire them to obey.  O, may all who come behind us find us faithful” especially our children.