Latest / Reformed Thinking / From Rescue to Ruin: Fear-Driven Pragmatism and the Birth of Moab and Ammon (Genesis 19:30–38)

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From Rescue to Ruin: Fear-Driven Pragmatism and the Birth of Moab and Ammon (Genesis 19:30–38) · Reformed Thinking

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  Welcome back to Reformed Thinking.
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  It is good to have you with us again as we open up the sources.
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  It is great to be here. Today we are heading into some
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  pretty difficult territory. We're looking at a passage of
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  scripture that honestly, most of us probably rush past in our
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  yearly Bible reading plans. Oh, absolutely.
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  It's uncomfortable, it's dark, and it can be, you know, really
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  confusing. It's certainly one of the darker
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  corners of Genesis. I mean, when you teach through
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  the book, this is the week you hope falls on a holiday so you
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  can just, you know, skip it. Right.
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  We're talking about Genesis 19 versus 30 to 38.
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  This is the aftermath of Sodom and Gomorrah.
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  We all know the fire and brimstone part, and we know
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  about Lot's wife looking back and turning into a pillar of
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  salt. That's the Sunday school
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  version. That's where the story usually
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  ends for most people. Exactly.
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  But then the camera follows Lot and his two daughters U into the
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  hills, into a cave, and what happens next involves fear,
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  isolation, intoxication and incest.
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  It's a it's heavy stuff. It is, and because it is so
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  disturbing, it's often treated as a, like you said, a fly over
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  passage. We read about the destruction of
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  the cities, and then we want to just Fast forward to chapter 20
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  where we get back to Abraham. Get back to the familiar
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  territory. Yeah, but we have to operate on
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  the conviction that the Holy Spirit included this epilogue
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  for a reason. It isn't there just for shock
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  value or to, you know, fill space.
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  There is a deep theological purpose here.
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  Right. And for this deep dive, we
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  really want to look at this specifically through a Reformed
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  theological framework, want to look at the Westminster
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  Confession, look at the interplay of God's sovereignty
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  and human responsibility. Because the sources we have
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  today, they really frame this story as a tension between
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  rescue and renewal. That is the core tension.
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  It's the difference between being delivered from a place of
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  judgement versus having that place of judgement delivered out
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  of your own heart. OK, say more about that.
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  Well, the thesis we want to look at today is that Lot was
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  physically rescued from Sodom, but the ethos of Sodom, the
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  whole way of thinking, the instincts, was not fully burned
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  out of him or his family. And there's a phrase in the
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  research that really stuck out to me.
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  Fear driven pragmatism, yes. That sums it up perfectly.
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  This idea that when we don't trust God's Providence, we start
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  doing the wrong things to secure the result we want.
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  That is it. We take matters into our own
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  hands. And the goal of looking at this,
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  this wreckage is not just to shake our heads at lot and feel
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  better about ourselves. It is to see how God in his
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  absolute sovereignty advances his redemptive purposes even
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  through the debris of human sin. I mean he really does draw
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  straight lines with very crooked sticks.
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  So let's set the scene. Genesis 18 and 19, we've had the
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  destruction. The angels literally had to drag
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  a lot out of the city. He was hesitating.
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  He was lingering. The text uses that specific
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  word. He did not want to leave.
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  It's a stunning picture of someone attached to a world
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  that's about to be annihilated. And now we get to this hinge
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  verse. Verse 29.
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  It says God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of
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  the overthrow. That feels incredibly
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  significant. It doesn't say God remembered
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  Lot. That is the theological anchor
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  for this entire section. If you miss that, you miss the
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  whole nature of the rescue. The text is so precise.
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  God remembered Abraham. So it's about Abraham.
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  It's all covenantal. In those terms, Lot's rescue
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  wasn't based on Lot's merit. It wasn't because Lot was so
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  courageous or wise or, you know, righteous in and of himself.
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  It was tethered to God's relationship with Abraham.
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  It's almost like a rescue by association, a secondary rescue.
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  In a sense, yes, it is. God, being faithful to his
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  promises to Abraham and Law is a beneficiary of that covenant
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  faithfulness. This is so crucial because it
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  tells us that Lot's deliverance is an act of pure grace, not a
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  reward for good behavior. And that context then sets us up
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  to understand why a man who has just been saved by God can
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  immediately turn around and act in such a faithless, disastrous
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  way. Exactly.
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  The grace of rescue doesn't race the weakness of the flesh
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  overnight. Which leads us right into our
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  first segment, The Geography of Fear.
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  We see Lot move from Zoar to a cave.
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  Now refresh our memories here. Zoar was the town Lot begged to
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  go to, right? That's correct.
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  You remember the negotiation with the angels?
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  It's almost comical if it weren't so tragic.
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  They told him to flee to the hills, to the mountains, get
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  away completely. And Lot's response.
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  He says no, I can't make it to the hills.
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  Disaster will overtake me. He's bargaining for his safety.
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  He says, look at this city, Zoar, Is it not a little one?
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  Let me go there. He didn't want the total
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  separation of the hills. He wanted a little version of
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  city life. He wanted something familiar.
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  He wanted a Sodom light. Sodom Light.
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  That's it. A manageable compromise.
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  Precisely. And God in his mercy granted it.
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  The angels agree. But now in verse 30 we read that
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  he went up out of Zohar, for he was afraid to dwell in Zohar.
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  Wow, the very place he begged for, the place he saw as his
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  only hope he's now terrified of. That is the profound irony of
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  half measures, isn't it? The compromise didn't provide
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  the security he thought it would.
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  The text doesn't say he was kicked out.
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  It doesn't say there was a new threat.
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  It just says he was afraid. So it's all internal.
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  It's his own mind. It is.
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  And this is where we really need to look at the Hebrew concept of
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  fear, the word year. OK.
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  Let's unpack this because usually in the Bible, you know,
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  the fear of the Lord is a good thing.
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  Right. The fear of the Lord is the
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  beginning of wisdom. That kind of fear is a
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  reverential awe that leads to obedience.
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  If Lott had the fear of the Lord, he would have gone to the
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  hills immediately as commanded. But that's not what's happening
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  here, no. Here Lott has traded the fear of
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  the Lord for the fear of man. Or, you know, the fear of
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  circumstances. It's a different kind of fear.
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  It's terror. It's dread.
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  It's a panic. It is a panic that unseats
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  reason. He's likely looking at the smoke
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  rising from the plane. He's in this little town of Zoar
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  and he becomes paranoid. He's thinking maybe the
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  destruction is going to spread. Maybe the people of Zoar will
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  turn on him for being associated with Sodom.
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  So the refuge becomes a prison in his mind.
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  A self-made prison, and his solution is to retreat even
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  further. So he moved to a cave, and the
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  sources point out this powerful symbolism of The Cave versus the
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  tent. Abraham is always in a tent.
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  This contrast is intentional. Abraham dwells in tents.
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  And what does that imply? It implies openness.
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  It implies you're a Pilgrim. You're ready to move.
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  When God speaks, it implies hospitality.
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  Remember, he ran out of his tent to meet the angels.
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  A tent is a temporary dwelling in the land of promise.
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  Yeah, it's forward-looking. Exactly.
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  And a cave is, well, it's a hole in the ground.
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  It's not built, it's just found. It's defensive, it's closed, it
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  feels like a tomb for the living.
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  It is, and the Hebrew word yashab is used here, which means
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  to sit or to dwell. Previously, the text told us lot
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  sacked in the gate of Sodom. Which was a position of
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  influence, of civic life. He was a somebody, a judge.
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  He had a place at the table. Now he sits.
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  It's in a cave. His world has just collapsed.
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  His world has shrunk from city gate to a hole in a rock.
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  Dramatically, and this is the danger of fear driven isolation
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  when you remember yourself from the covenant community.
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  Notice he didn't go find Abraham.
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  He went away from everyone. You remove accountability.
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  The Cave becomes a Petri dish. It creates a closed ecosystem
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  where reality gets distorted, where your own fears and desires
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  just echo back at you. It's an echo chamber, just him
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  and his two traumatized daughters.
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  And that is where the theological point really hits
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  home. Deliverance from judgment.
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  Getting out of Sodom is what we might call justification or
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  rescue. It's a change in status, but
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  that does not automatically equal sanctification.
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  Which is the inward renewal of the heart.
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  Yes, Lot is safe from the fire, but his heart is still deeply
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  unstable. He's physically safe, but
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  spiritually he's disintegrating. And that disintegration, that
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  failure of leadership, it creates a vacuum.
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  Lot isn't leading. He isn't acting as a page work.
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  He's just sitting there paralyzed.
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  He's abdicated his role. And that brings us to the
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  Daughters segment 2. The leadership vacuum is
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  immediately filled by the first born daughter.
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  Right when the father abdicates, someone else steps in, and here
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  it is, the first born, and we have to look very carefully at
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  their logic. In verses 31 and 32.
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  This is what the source is called awfulizing or
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  catastrophic thinking. Explain that because she makes a
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  pretty bold claim. She says our father is old, and
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  there is not a man on earth to come into us after the manner of
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  all the earth. There is not a man on earth.
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  I mean, let that sink in. Is that true?
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  Let's Fact Check it. Is it literally true?
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  No, not at all. Zoar is right down the hill full
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  of men. Abraham and his entire camp of
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  hundreds of men are a few days journey away.
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  So it's factually, objectively false, but in their minds it's
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  true. Fear has completely warped their
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  perception of reality. They're looking at the world
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  through the lens of trauma and isolation.
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  So. They believe the world as they
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  knew it has ended. They believe they're the last
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  people left, or at least that no one will ever come near them
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  because they are refugees from the cursed city.
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  They've drawn the circle of possibilities so small that it
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  only includes the three of them in a cave.
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  And that false belief, that catastrophizing, is what drives
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  their pragmatism. Yes, this is the core of this
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  section. Pragmatism without promise.
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  OK, break that down for us. What's the goal and what's the
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  method? The goal, on the surface, is
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  biologically good. They say.
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  Let us preserve seed from our Father.
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  They want to ensure the survival of the family line.
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  Right in the ancient world, extinction of your family line
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  was the ultimate tragedy. It was a curse.
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  So the end they are pursuing is, in their minds, unnecessary and
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  even a good thing. But the means.
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  The method is incest, a profound moral evil, a violation of the
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  created order. And this is the classic trap of
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  pragmatism. It says the end justifies the
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  means. It says we're in a desperate
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  situation, so God's moral law must be suspended.
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  We have no choice. Right, We have no choice.
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  That is the cry of pragmatism in every generation.
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  Faith, by contrast, waits on Providence.
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  Like Abraham? Think of Abraham, he waited 25
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  years for Isaac. It looked impossible.
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  He was old, Sarah was old, but he trusted God's timing.
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  The daughters of law are acting like Ishmael Gigger exactly
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  trying to force a solution through the flesh because they
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  don't trust God to provide. They can't see any other way, so
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  they invent 1. And the sources mentioned that
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  this whole line of logic, it just sounds a lot like Sodom.
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  It does. That phrase after the manner of
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  all the Earth is so telling. They know the biology, they know
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  how babies are made, but they have completely absorbed the
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  moral relativism of Sodom. What do you mean by that?
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  In Sodom, you use people to get what you want.
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  You manipulate, you disregard boundaries.
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  You see others not as image bearers to be honored, but as
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  objects to be used for your own purposes.
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  They aren't looking at Lot as their father, a patriarch, to
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  honor. No, he has been reduced to a
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  biological tool, a resource to be exploited for their goal of
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  self preservation. It's a complete inversion of the
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  family order. The father should be protecting
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  the daughters. Instead, the daughters are
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  manipulating and managing the. Father and it's premeditated.
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  It says, come, let us make our father drink wine.
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  This wasn't a crime of passion or a moment of weakness.
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  It was a conspiracy. Come, let us That implies
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  planning, discussion, agreement. They identified the obstacle,
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  their father's conscience or his likely resistance, and they
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  identified the solution. Intoxication.
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  Get him drunk so he doesn't know what's happening.
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  It's manipulative and exploitative to its core.
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  Which brings us to the ACT itself, Segment 3, the wine you
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  mentioned earlier, the parallel to Noah.
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  Yes, the parallel is really striking.
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  It's almost a deliberate echo in the text.
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  In Genesis 9, you have Noah, a righteous man who survives the
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  flood, a great judgement of water.
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  He then plants a vineyard, gets drunk and lies uncovered in his
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  tent, which leads to shame and a curse.
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  And here. Here Lot, a righteous man,
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  survives the fire, a great judgment.
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  He drinks wine in a cave and falls into a profound shame that
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  will define his legacy. So why the wine?
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  I mean, aside from it being the plot mechanism, what's going on
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  with Lot here? It's almost certainly being used
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  as a numbing agent. You have to imagine his state of
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  mind. Lot has lost everything.
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  His wife, his home, his wealth, his social standing.
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  He is deeply traumatized. So he's drinking to escape.
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  He's drinking to escape the memory of the fire, the screams,
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  the loss. But theologically, the sources
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  are clear that intoxication is treated here as a form of moral
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  abdication. It's not just.
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  A harmless escape. No, it disarms the believer.
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  When you check out mentally and spiritually, when you numb your
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  conscience, you are essentially taking your armor off in the
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  middle of a battlefield. You make yourself vulnerable.
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  And then we get this phrase that's repeated for both nights.
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  He did not know when she lay down or when she arose.
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  Now, I've heard people try to use this to say, you know, this
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  gets lot off the hook. He didn't know, so he's
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  innocent. That is a very tempting reading,
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  especially if we want to clean up the story a bit.
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  But it's almost certainly incorrect.
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  The text is not offering an excuse for lot.
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  It's offering an indictment. How so?
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  Explain that. Because a father ought to know a
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  guardian of the home, a patriarch should not be so
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  compromised, so out of control, so drunk that he is oblivious to
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  the violation of his own daughter in his own bed.
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  So the shame is in the not knowing.
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  The shame is in the very fact that he didn't know.
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  It's an indictment of his abdication.
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  It shows how far he has fallen from the man who sat in the
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  gate. He has lost his agency, his
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  awareness, his protective role. He's just a passive object in
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  his own story. It connects to the doctrine of
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  total depravity, doesn't it? From the Westminster Confession.
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  It does. I mean even a righteous man.
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  And let's not forget Second Peter 2 verse 7 calls Lot
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  righteous, tormented in his soul by the wickedness he saw.
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  Even a righteous man is capable of grievous sin if left to the
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  weakness of the flesh and a lack of vigilance.
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  We are not safe just because we're saved.
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  We are never safe in ourselves. We need constant vigilance,
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  constant dependence on God's grace.
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  Lot let his guard down and disaster ensued.
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  And the structure of the text really emphasizes this because
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  it happens twice. It's not just one bad night.
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  The two nights. That repetition in the narrative
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  is brutal. It's intentional.
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  It happens once. And then verse 34, the morning
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  after the first born, doesn't say, Oh no, what have we done?
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  This was a terrible mistake. No, she says.
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  Behold, I lay last night with my father.
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  Let us make him drink wine tonight also.
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  It becomes a procedure. It's just a plan to be executed
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  again. That is the terrifying nature of
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  sin, isn't it? The first time you cross a line,
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  it might be difficult, there might be some hesitation.
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  The second time, it's a strategy.
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  The conscience gets seared, the shock wears off, and the sin
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  becomes normalized. They've justified it to
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  themselves so thoroughly that they can just rinse and repeat.
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  The moral horror is gone. It's gone.
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  It's been replaced by pragmatic determination.
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  So the plan works. They get exactly what they
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  wanted. Which brings us to Segment 4,
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  which covers the legacy of this act versus 36 through 38.
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  Thus, both the daughters of Lot became pregnant by their father.
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  And here we see the irony of success.
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  In a purely pragmatic sense. The plan was a triumph.
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  They wanted to preserve the family line, and they did.
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  They preserve the seed. They achieved their goal.
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  They did, but in the biblical worldview, success in a sinful
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  scheme is often a form of judgement, not a blessing.
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  God let them succeed. You could say He handed them
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  over to their desires and the fruit of that is what follows.
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  And. The names they choose for the
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  children. I mean, they didn't try to hide
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  it. It's almost like they're proud
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  of it. They memorialized it.
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  The first son born to the older daughter is named Moab, and the
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  etymology there in Hebrew sounds a lot like miaf, which literally
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  means from father. Wait, she named the kid from my
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  father? Essentially, yes.
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  It's a name that is a permanent public declaration of his
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  origin. Every time she called his name,
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  she was stating the fact of the incest that's.
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  Astonishing. And the younger daughter?
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  She names her son Ben AMI, which means son of my people or son of
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  my kin. It celebrates the closed loop of
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  their isolation. It's like saying we didn't need
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  outsiders. We did this ourselves.
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  We kept it in the family. So these aren't just babies with
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  shameful names. The text makes it clear these
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  become nation. That is the crucial shift from
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  private sin to public history. The text explicitly says he is
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  the father of the Moabites to this day and the father of the
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  Ammonites to this day. So what happened in a dark cave
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  didn't stay in The Cave. Not at all.
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  It's spilled out onto the world stage.
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  It birthed 2 entire nations that would become neighbors and very
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  often enemies of Israel for centuries to come.
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  Private sin has public consequences.
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  And this connects to that big Genesis theme of the sea,
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  doesn't it? It's a major theme, the conflict
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  of the seeds Throughout Genesis. You have this contrast.
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  You have the seed of promise, which is Isaac.
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  That comes by supernatural intervention in God's timing
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  through faith. The promised child.
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  Yes, and then you have the seed of the flesh.
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  These are the children born out of human manipulation, fear, and
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  breaking God's law. Ishmael is the first example and
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  Moab and Ammon are another. And these two nations, Moab and
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  Ammon, they have a pretty rocky relationship with Israel later
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  on in the Old Testament. Rocky is putting it mildly.
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  They are a constant thorn in Israel's side.
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  Think about Balak, the king of Moab.
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  He hires the prophet Balaam to curse Israel in the wilderness.
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  Right in the Book of Numbers. Or think about the seduction at
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  Balpior, where Moabite women lead Israelite men into gross
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  idolatry and sexual sin. It gets so bad that the law in
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  Deuteronomy 23 actually excludes Moabites and Ammonites from the
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  assembly of the Lord for 10 generations.
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  So they become this rod of discipline that God uses against
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  Israel. Spot on.
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  When Israel strays from God, he often uses the Moabites or the
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  Ammonites to attack them and wake them come up.
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  It's a constant living reminder that our sinful compromises in
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  the past can create the very thorns that prick us and our
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  children in the future. This is, I mean, it's just
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  bleak. We have a righteous man in a
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  cave, drunk and disgraced, incest, hostile nations born
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  from that union. It just feels like a complete
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  tragedy with no redeeming value. It feels that way.
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  But we promise a Reformed thinking perspective on this,
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  which means we have to talk about where God is in all of
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  this. That takes us to our last
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  segment. Right.
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  We have to do the theological synthesis.
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  How do we reconcile this absolute mess with the doctrine
• 18:34
  of God's sovereignty? Because God clearly allowed it.
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  None of this happened outside of his control.
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  He did, and the Westminster Confession chapter 5 on
• 18:42
  Providence is so helpful here. It teaches that God the Great
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  Creator does uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all
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  creatures, actions and things. But, and this is critical, it
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  also says that He is not the author of sin.
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  So he governs it, but he doesn't 'cause it he's not morally
• 19:00
  culpable for it. Correct.
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  He permitted lots fear. He permitted the daughter's
• 19:04
  wicked scheme. He permitted the intoxication.
• 19:06
  And the question is why? And the answer is that God
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  allows these things to demonstrate that human scheming,
• 19:11
  no matter how perverse, cannot ultimately thwart His redemptive
• 19:15
  plan. And in fact he uses it.
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  He uses it to set the stage for an even greater display of His
• 19:21
  grace. And here is where it gets really
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  interesting, because if you just read Genesis, you think, OK,
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  Moab bad, Eman bad is real good good, end of story.
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  But then you keep reading your Bible and you get to a little
• 19:32
  book tucked away in the Old Testament called Ruth.
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  The surprise of Luth. This is the Christ centered
• 19:37
  conclusion that we absolutely must not miss.
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  Who is Ruth? She is a Moabitess.
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  From the nation born in The Cave.
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  From that very nation, by the law of Deuteronomy 23, she
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  should be excluded from the assembly.
• 19:50
  She is a descendant of this horrific incident.
• 19:52
  She carries that history, that DNA, but.
• 19:54
  She doesn't stay in Moab, that's the key.
• 19:56
  No, her whole world collapses. But unlike Lot's daughters, she
• 20:01
  doesn't turn inward. She clings to her mother-in-law,
• 20:04
  Naomi, and she makes that this declaration.
• 20:07
  Your people shall be my people and your God, my God.
• 20:10
  It's a conversion. It's a radical conversion.
• 20:12
  She turns from the idols of Moab to the one true God of Israel,
• 20:16
  and she goes with Naomi to Bethlehem.
• 20:18
  And who does she meet and marry there?
• 20:20
  Boaz and Boaz acts as the goal, The kinsman Redeemer.
• 20:24
  No, think about the contrast lot.
• 20:26
  The father in The Cave failed to protect his own daughters.
• 20:29
  He was passive and compromised. Boaz, the godly man in
• 20:33
  Bethlehem, sees a vulnerable foreigner, a Moabitus, and he
• 20:36
  protects her. He redeems.
• 20:37
  Her. He brings her into the Covenant
• 20:38
  community. He does, and they have a son
• 20:41
  named Obed who has a son named Jesse, who has a son named
• 20:45
  David. King David.
• 20:46
  King David. Which means the blood of Lot,
• 20:49
  the blood of that incestuous union in The Cave, flows
• 20:53
  directly into the royal line of Israel.
• 20:55
  And if we keep, if we go all the way to Matthew, chapter 1.
• 20:57
  The genealogy of Jesus Christ Matthew makes a point to include
• 21:01
  the women and he says Boaz, the father of Obed by Ruth, Jesus
• 21:05
  the Messiah, the Savior of the world, has Moabite blood in his
• 21:09
  human lineage. That is just mind blowing when
• 21:11
  you think about it. God takes the wreckage of The
• 21:13
  Cave, the absolute worst of human pragmatism and sin, and he
• 21:18
  doesn't just sweep it away. He doesn't just condemn it, he
• 21:21
  redeems it. He grasps the bitter fruit from
• 21:23
  that poison tree right into the tree of life.
• 21:25
  This is the Gospel application. It shows us that Christ
• 21:27
  identifies with the outsider. He identifies with those who
• 21:30
  have shameful origins. He is the Savior of the Moabites
• 21:33
  of this world who turned to Him in faith.
• 21:35
  So for the listener who might be thinking right now my family
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  history is a mess, or I've made compromises that have ruined my
• 21:42
  life, or my story is too shameful.
• 21:44
  The message is grace is stronger than The Cave.
• 21:48
  Your past, your family's sin, your own zoar moments of
• 21:52
  compromise. None of that is too difficult
• 21:55
  for God to redeem. He can draw a straight
• 21:58
  redemptive line from The Cave all the way to the cross.
• 22:01
  But there is a warning here too, right?
• 22:03
  We shouldn't hear this and think that grace is an excuse.
• 22:05
  Absolutely not. We cannot say let us sin that
• 22:08
  grace may abound. Look at Lot.
• 22:11
  Yes he was saved. Yes, his line ends up
• 22:13
  miraculously in Jesus ancestry, but Lot's own life ends in
• 22:18
  silence and obscurity. He just disappears for the
• 22:21
  narrative after verse 38. Completely.
• 22:22
  We don't hear of his death or his burial.
• 22:24
  He leaves no final blessing, no legacy of faith.
• 22:27
  He is a righteous man who lost his influence and completely
• 22:30
  wasted his witness. He was saved as through fire, as
• 22:33
  Paul says in First Corinthians. That's the perfect description.
• 22:35
  Everything he built, the wood, hay and stubble of his life in
• 22:38
  Sodom was burned up. He entered heaven, but he
• 22:41
  entered smelling of smoke and with empty hands.
• 22:43
  And we don't want that to be our story.
• 22:45
  We want an abundant entrance. We want to leave a legacy of
• 22:48
  faith, not a legacy of Moab. So bringing this all together as
• 22:51
  we wrap up the big take away seems to be circling back to
• 22:54
  that danger of pragmatism without promise.
• 22:58
  That is the killer. It is that mindset that says I
• 23:01
  have to take control because God isn't acting fast enough for me.
• 23:05
  That mindset leads us to our own personal zores, our little
• 23:07
  compromises, and eventually to our own caves of isolation and
• 23:11
  sin. It's the fear of man, the fear
• 23:13
  of circumstance overtaking the fear of God.
• 23:16
  And the only antidote is faith. It is trusting that God's plan
• 23:20
  relies on his faithfulness, not on our successful scheming.
• 23:25
  We don't have to preserve our own seed by breaking God's law.
• 23:28
  We preserve our lives by losing them for His sake.
• 23:31
  I want to leave the listener with a thought to chew on.
• 23:33
  This week we've talked about lots physical cave, but I want
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  to ask you, where in your life are you currently tempted to say
• 23:40
  God isn't acting fast enough so I need to force a solution?
• 23:43
  Where are you compromising because you're afraid of the
• 23:45
  consequences of full obedience? That is the question, isn't it?
• 23:49
  Are you dwelling in a cave of your own making, a cave of fear
• 23:52
  or bitterness or secret sin, because you're afraid to walk in
• 23:56
  the open light of God's will? And if you are, remember that
• 23:59
  the way out is better scheming. It's repentance.
• 24:02
  It's walking back down the mountain, out of The Cave, and
• 24:05
  trusting the God who remembers Abraham and who remembers you in
• 24:09
  Christ. Amen to that.
• 24:11
  Thanks for joining us on this deep dive.
• 24:13
  This has been reformed thinking. We'll catch you next time.