The Desires of Your Heart

Let's take a step back and try to catch the whole picture. In the beginning, God speaks, and the world exists in answer. God patiently shepherds the emerging world, his Spirit on the face of what's formless and void. As it's told to us, by careful divisions and decrees he shapes for himself a universal temple for his own indwelling; and in that world, he plants a garden sanctuary in which to install his images. That'd be us. We see the world as represented in the Garden of Delight, a good place full of all things healthful and beautiful and wonderful. We discover there that God is the provider, ensuring in his sanctuary we have everything we need to thrive and to flourish as the kind of creature we are: “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden” (Genesis 2:16). “The LORD is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made” (Psalm 145:9). “When you open your hand,” the creatures “are filled with good things” (Psalm 104:28), the good and needful things whereby we flourish.

But it takes more for a place to be the Garden of Delight. The psalmist also sang, “You open your hand; you satisfy the pleasure of every living thing” (Psalm 145:16). More than just what's objectively good for creatures, for humans, for persons, there's also what pleases us, what we desire to enjoy, what we crave. Some things we desire lightly – maybe I could go for Italian for lunch. Some things we desire more strongly, more centrally – I desire being the husband of my wife. The strongest and most central desires are the desires of our hearts. And just as God is the provider who ensures in Eden that his creatures flourish according to their natures, so he's the lover who ensures in Eden that the deepest desires of our hearts not fail us. “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but it's a tree of life when a thing craved comes” (Proverbs 13:12).

Ah, but the voice of temptation hisses softly in, suggesting God is neither; in that darkness, we crave what won't just satisfy nutritionally and please the senses, but also confer divine wisdom on our own terms. The result is excommunication from the sanctuary, exile from the garden. We enter the world we know, thorns and thistles and thwarted thoughts. Here, we suffer evil. One philosopher suggests that you suffer evil either (1) when you lose out on things that are objectively good for your flourishing as a human person, or (2) when you lose out on the desires of your heart, or (3) when, hardest of all, we lose both. And neither is transparent to us: we can misjudge what's good for human flourishing, as many do today, and we can also misjudge what we most deeply desire, since our hearts are hard to know. But even when we do judge rightly in theory, we might think we have it when we don't or think we lack it when we do have it.¹ And, of course, we can enthrone as core in our hearts things that are less worthy, like completing a stamp collection, or more worthy, like personal relationships.²

When we first meet Abram, we know little but that he's the son of a father, the husband of a wife, and the father of nobody: “Sarai was barren; she had no child” (Genesis 11:30). That's a suffering, an unhealthy condition of the reproductive system; but how Abram feels about it isn't yet clear. When he hears a divine appeal to change his life and venture forth in faith, he receives many offers: reputation, significance, even the foundation of a new nation conceived in blessing and dedicated to the proposition that this God is faithful (Genesis 12:1-3). We soon find, though, that his heart craves personal safety; yet Egyptian misadventure teaches him that God is faithful to watch over him even when situations become humanly hopeless (Genesis 12:10-20). All this time, he's implicitly taken his late brother's son Lot for a successor, his chance to invest in a future for his family's flesh and blood. But Lot bucks for independence, to be a brother and not a son; they part ways to stave off a feud, though Abram positions himself to watch over him, as God had for Abram (Genesis 13:1-18). It pays off when Abram can ride to the rescue, a warrior mighty to save; his primary desire is no longer personal safety but a loved one, and even witness ahead of wealth (Genesis 14:1-24). Yet his lost brother returns to Sodom.

Only as the LORD pokes and prods Abram, offering him the fulfillment of now-secondary desires, does he open up what his heart really wants: a son of his own flesh. He's heartbroken over the lack of fatherhood to one who can inherit, yet “for years he had already given up hope of a son.”³ Awakening this desire brings Abram's heart's wounds to the surface of his life. But “the craving of the afflicted you have heard, O LORD! You will strengthen their heart; you will incline your ear” (Psalm 10:17). Now the LORD can hang on his heart a promise: Abram, I'll give you exactly what you want: not only your own son to inherit, but your seed will become as plentiful as the lights that dance by midnight. Abram believes; Abram grasps the God who says so (Genesis 15:1-6).

Years go by, and as Sarai judges herself impeded, she hatches a slave-surrogate scheme. Abram stretches forth his hand to forbidden fruit, and nine months later he sees the face of his flesh-and-blood, his son (Genesis 16). All in his house might then have quoted: “You have given him his heart's craving, and have not withheld the request of his lips!” (Psalm 21:2). For thirteen years, he's happy as the father of a son. He's obtained the desire of his heart, or so he thinks. That's when God interrupts his domestic bliss with a recruitment speech, to seal the promises and covenant in pain and blood, yet by that fateful cut he'll receive the fruitfulness promised, beyond this false start. With a change in name comes a summon to search deeper in his heart for his desires – not just any son, but one by his lawful wife, to inherit also the covenant, to become ancestor of nations and kings – and so to make Abraham not just any father but a founding patriarch (Genesis 17).⁴ Oh, Abraham scoffs, protests, conceals – he's convinced he's had the desire of his heart, so this deepening and postponement feel like theft.

To heal that, there comes a surprise visit, a mysterious tutorial in patriarchal justice, and an apparent failure to save the city or his lost brother (Genesis 18-19). But if he can't save a brother, how can he be a father? If he can't plead for a city, how can he found a nation? And how can he entrust his desires to such a Judge? So he flees cross country, acts again the man whose deepest desires are security and prosperity, and fights the desire he wants not to want. Then, as we heard last week, a confrontation by an unexpectedly God-fearing king and a confirmation of his prophetic mission shake Abraham from his self-absorption and self-doubt (Genesis 20). He then finds, as we'll explore further next Sunday, that God proves himself as faithful as Abraham ever believed, at last fulfilling the promise – as Abraham knows as he cradles the son born for covenant and country (Genesis 21:1-4). If we had Abraham's comments here, we'd hear him admit that God gave him the desire of his heart.

Had you asked Abram at age 74 what he most wanted, he might've given you an answer. But I doubt very much he would've said he wanted to be a patriarch whose offspring, especially through Sarah's son, his heir, will grow into nations and will become many kings, inheriting through trials the land promised them by the LORD God, so as to become the saving blessing of all the nations of the earth. Now, at age 100, Abraham knows that's what he wanted most. But he could only know that through a process of discerning his deepest desire, by discovering the incompleteness of those things he'd thought he wanted, gaining a more profound understanding of himself.

That was part of the problem. The other part was that Abraham, as he experienced more of life, actually shifted his desires themselves. Certainly, the dreams I most cherished as a boy – I wanted to be an architect – aren't the same as my highest aspirations now. Experience of life changed my desires, even my deeper desires. So it was with Abraham. Over time, it isn't just that his heart's desire has been more fully exposed; it's that his desires have been stretched and enlarged and redirected. The process over these many years “gives Abraham exactly what he wanted, but in a form better than he would have known how to want it.”⁵

And that, I believe, is the point of it all. Abraham's now got the desire of his heart, or at least a true beginning to it, on the other side of a quarter-century of heartbreak. God, of course, had the power to make Sarai conceive Abram's son on their honeymoon and sidestep all this; but, for God's reasons, he deferred their hope, allowed their hearts to feel sick, precisely in order to grow a tree of life for them – gradually, patiently, by building this relationship of trust and yearning. It isn't easy or simple, it isn't smooth or gentle, this constant game of promise and delay. It's certainly no fun for Abraham, and it demands a great deal of patience from God, too.⁶ So why?

God has, in fact, harnessed Abraham's desires for a greater end. God is using Abraham's journey of discovering what's on his own heart in order to remake Abraham's heart, to expand Abraham's heart. As chapter 22 will give us to know, the deepest desire of Abraham's heart won't be just to be the father of his own son, nor just to be the patriarch of nations and the forebear of kings, but to have such things as gifts from the God he trusts and reveres and loves. “The desires of Abraham's heart widen to include God as well as children and patriarchal status,” and God progressively moves himself to the center of Abraham's heart step by step through this journey.⁷

And that's just as it should be, because by nature we are designed to hunger and thirst for God, to have him as what we want above all, as the “deepest, inbuilt hunger” of our heart.⁸ It's like St. Augustine confessed: “You arouse us so that praising you may bring us joy, because you have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our heart is unquiet until it rests in you.”⁹ That's where God is leading Abraham, but not to the exclusion of what Abraham as an individual has as the desire of his heart: to still have and love this son, to still be a patriarch. It's like Jesus said: “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33), now reshaped and woven into a fundamental desire for God which turns everything else into a gift of grace, thus fulfilling our desires even more splendidly when we get them.¹⁰

The psalmist has warned us that “the craving of the wicked will perish” (Psalm 112:10) – that, for those who live badly, who set their hearts on unworthy things, and who demand their satisfaction on their own terms and by their own will, their cravings will ultimately be unsatisfied. That's what we saw in Genesis 3's goodbye to the garden. But the psalmist also assures us: “Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4). In the end, through discovering delight in the LORD over a lifetime, Abraham was positioned to receive the desires of his heart – desires he'd always had but never quite recognized, desires that have now been transformed to become something greater than they had been, desires being fulfilled in ways he hadn't predicted until he had them, and then he knew the goodness of God.

And it's precisely in this – in providing Abraham not only with the things that make him flourish as a human being, but also in granting him the fulfillment of what his heart really desires and comes to desire – that God is able to redeem all the suffering which Abraham has endured along the way, and to make it no longer an evil but a pathway to true joy. Once Abraham believes with delight that the LORD will be faithful to add all these things unto him in God's way and in God's time, then he can look back and see his heart's pains as the labors of childbirth, which only made possible the good and desirable life that lay on the other side, whatever unexpected shape it should take; it will be recognizable once faith becomes sight, once imagination becomes taste.¹¹

I don't know all the details of your story. I barely know the broad strokes of my own! So I don't know how you have suffered, where you've been kept from flourishing or what the deferred desires of your heart have been. You yourself may not know. But I do know this: Delight yourself in the Lord, learn to hunger and thirst for God, and he will give you such things also, in his own time, in his own way, in his own surprise shape. Things you want most in life, what you care most about, are precisely what God has in store for you, as he refines them to be compatible with your flourishing as a person. In such gifts, God will redeem what it took to get you there.

God promises it, because God wants to bless us. “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:11). But he wants that because he is Supreme Goodness, more good than all the other things that please us, and we were made for him. He is training us to discern and refine our deepest desires to center on him, so that, when he gives us what we care about most, he's giving us not just his blessings but himself.

Today, God comes to meet us at the altar. For Christ has given his flesh as true food and his blood as true drink, that we might taste and see that the Lord is the Pure Goodness whereby any and all things are good and lovely and worth wanting. Perhaps only in tasting God do we realize how hungry we've been all along, how heartsick we were without recognizing it or understanding why, and that such appetites were not sent into our hearts to return void, but to be satisfied indeed. Here, is a restoration of communion in the sanctuary of God. Here is grown a garden of delight. Here is the God of Abraham – he wants to feed us, wants to be tasted, wants to incite and train our desires. May we lay here before the Lord our hearts, with all our desires, that he might uncover them, refine them, use them to lead us, deepen our cravings, and be for us a Tree of Life indeed. Amen.

Seven Sheep A-Swearing

Ever since chapter 13, Abraham has been based at one place: “by the oaks of Mamre, which are at Hebron; and there he built an altar to the LORD” (Genesis 13:18). Now, a couple decades later, “from there Abraham set out” (Genesis 20:1). It comes as a complete shock. Why would he leave such a stable place behind? Well, we don't have to puzzle too hard. The last time we stood with Abraham the other week, he was past Mamre at the ridge where the Canaanite hill country rises over the Jordan River Valley, watching the smoke billow up from the ash heaps that used to be Sodom, Gomorrah, and their environment (Genesis 19:27-28). The afternoon that preceded that, Abraham had faced off with the LORD's human face, begging for Sodom to be spared, wheeling and dealing over criteria for giving it a new day. Abraham had been invited into the LORD's secret counsels, so he boldly pressed and pressed as hard as he felt he dared (at the time). But he went home that night in anxiety, wondering if his campaign worked, wondering if he'd done enough, been enough (Genesis 18:23-33).

He'd tossed and turned all through the night, only to walk back after daybreak and find everything in ruins. A complete and total loss. It taunted him, haunted him. That was where Abraham's nephew Lot had lived. Now, even though the city was a goner, the author assured us that, for the sake of Abraham and his prayer, God had made a way of safety for Lot and his family, and Lot and his daughters had gotten out to the east (Genesis 19:29-30). Last week we heard what'll happen with his story, uncomfortable as it was (Genesis 19:30-38). But the bottom line is, Lot lives. We know that, because the author told us. But... does anybody tell Abraham?

The whole reason why Abraham had settled east of Hebron was that to keep a respectfully distant watch over Lot's life down in the basin. Now, the basin must have seemed a scale model of hell itself, and Abraham assumed that Lot was swept away with everything else. To see it, then, to smell it, must've been traumatic. “In his own eyes, he is a failure,” a failure for Lot and a failure for Sodom.¹ He failed his late brother Haran's only son, letting him (so he thinks) go up in smoke. He failed the city, wondering if he'd pled its case hard enough. So the Abraham who enters chapter 20 is an Abraham “filled with dread and doubt after Sodom.”² Having witnessed the destructive powers of God as Judge there, can Abraham look at God the same again?

It so shook Abraham that when he reviews these past few decades of his life, the decades of his purposeful walk with God to a land of promise, he says that “God caused me to wander from the house of my father” (Genesis 20:13). The verb he uses, 'wander,' basically means to get lost – to go astray, to be in error, to be deceived and misled. Abraham is so shaken that, in his bitterness and sorrow, he speaks as if heaven's misled him this whole time, as if God gave him bad directions, as if he'd been hoodwinked into quitting Terah's house, as if he regrets having come this way at all. After all, he believes his father Terah's grandson Lot is now dead at God's hand; so he's got to be thinking, “If I'd never left home, if I'd never set foot here, my brother's boy would still be alive.”

He can't handle the guilt, the shame, the horror – so he runs. He flees nearly to the other side of Canaan. “Abraham set out to the land of the Negeb” (Genesis 20:1). Last we heard of this semi-desert south end of Canaan, it was Abraham's last stop before running away to Egypt to escape a heavy famine (Genesis 12:9-10). Now he passes through again, and then there “he dwelt between Kadesh and Shur” (Genesis 20:1). This is where Hagar ran when she fled from Sarah (Genesis 16:7-14). Abraham has technically poked his way out of Canaan yet again, into the Sinai Peninsula.³

But then he pulled back a bit,⁴ “and he sojourned in Gerar” (Genesis 20:1), a town whose name starts with the word 'sojourner,' so that's perfect. It puts him in Lot's crispy shoes, since Lot also sojourned in a city just past the edge of Canaan (Genesis 10:9; 19:9).⁵ Gerar was one of the biggest cities in the area during the Middle Bronze Age, a forty-acre metropolis on the north bank of a modest river, about a 55-mile hike from Hebron.⁶ Maybe he's gone back up to do business there, to buy supplies and sell milk and wool and other products a man with flocks and herds might bring to market.⁷ It was a city-state, somewhat independent, with its own town king Abimelech – a common enough name in such parts.

It seems like a normal setting, but only at the end of a later story do we learn that the region around Gerar is “the land of the Philistines” (Genesis 21:32, 34). Gerar is, in fact, just a little bit inland from Gaza, which has a way of recurring in the news these days. But the trouble in this line is, the Philistines were invaders from the Greek world, “the remnant of the coastland of Caphtor” in Crete (Jeremiah 47:4), and God led them out to seize part of the Canaanite coast after Israel's exodus from Egypt (Amos 9:7). This is centuries too early. So either Genesis is just reminding us of the future inhabitants,⁸ or there are Cretan merchants or mercenaries who set up shop in Gerar, precursors of their Philistine cousins who'll follow them.⁹ Gerar's military chief Phicol's very un-Canaanite name, plus the Cretan artifacts we've found there from the tail end of patriarch times, say there must be something to that after all.¹⁰ Either way, as we read these stories, Genesis wants to surprise us by reminding us of Philistines, those uncircumcised pagans whose reputation elsewhere in the Bible ain't great.

So that's where Abraham's going, and the condition he's going in. “He sojourned in Gerar, and Abraham said of Sarah his wife, 'She is my sister'” (Genesis 20:2). Say, did anybody else just feel “an overwhelming sense of deja vu”?¹¹ This ought to feel like a familiar set-up, because just after our introduction to Abraham and his call, he fled to Egypt, and right as he approached the border, he begged his wife, “Say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you” (Genesis 12:13). Hopefully you recall the heartbreak, the chaos, the danger that came of that choice. Earlier, we said Lot was written as a parody of Abraham, wanting to do right but handicapped by a poverty of moral wisdom. But now Abraham seems to be imitating Lot.

Why is Abraham backsliding? Why is he pulling out his old tricks? The excuse he offers later is, “Because I said to myself, 'Surely there is no fear of God in this place, and they will kill me over the matter of my wife'” (Genesis 20:11). Remember, this is an Abraham who's seen the smoke of Sodom, a city so corrupt not even ten people could be found there who feared God. He might be thinking that they didn't deserve his wasted efforts. Now, as he hops to the other side of the territory, he's cynical enough to see Sodom wherever he goes. For why should Gerar be so different from Sodom or Gomorrah, just because it's here and not there? So Abraham has resigned himself to expecting the worst of every place now, that they'll laugh off moral accountability as flippantly as the Sodomites had. If God 'caused him to wander' in these regions (Genesis 20:13), it implies he's been left to fend for himself, to survive by his own wits – so he'd better be shrewd and tricky to help himself.¹²

And so, predictably, “Abimelech king of Gerar sent and took Sarah” (Genesis 20:2). In the first story where he pulled this, “the Egyptians saw that the woman was beautiful; and, when the princes of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh,” and that's when she was taken (Genesis 12:14-15). A couple decades later, the text is almost “pointedly silent about Sarah's beauty.”¹³ She's nearing ninety now, which may mean Abimelech has different motives. Maybe opening his harem to Abraham's sister is meant as the start of a new bond between them.¹⁴ Though if that's the motive, Abraham's crazy to expect danger if he'd just acknowledged her as his wife.

But, come on, we've read this story before, haven't we? We know how this goes, so why do we need to hear the same plot play out twice, even with adjustments? Note the timing. Abraham was ninety-nine when the LORD appeared to him to update their covenant, imposing on him the command of circumcision (Genesis 17:9-14). But with that command came a promise that he'd be fruitful: God pledged him his own son by Sarah, “whom Sarah shall bear to you at this appointed time next year” (Genesis 17:21). The next chapter opens in the weeks to follow, twice reaffirming said appointed time (Genesis 18:10, 14). One year after the covenant, Sarah has to give birth to the promised son – Abraham's own flesh and blood. There's a countdown on it. Now, giving birth tends to follow nine months of gestating the baby in the womb, meaning that in Genesis 17, God was actually promising to let Sarah conceive three months later. Sodom and Gomorrah burn anywhere from a week to a couple months into that time, and so by the time Abraham then makes for the Negeb, settles between Kadesh and Shur, and then comes up to Gerar, we're down to the wire. Either Sarah is already pregnant by Abraham and doesn't yet know it,¹⁵ or she needs to get that way pronto.

But now, all of a sudden, Abraham has let her be taken away from him into the harem of King Abimelech. And if Sarah isn't pregnant, then she's about to miss her window with Abraham within the week. If she's already pregnant, then now we have a scandal: nobody will be sure the son Sarah bears nine months later is Abraham's and not Abimelech's. So at least the paternity of the promised son, if not his very existence, is now on the line. Which means, since the timetable is part of God's promises, that the truthfulness of God himself is at stake in this story. It doesn't get much more dramatic than that!

When Pharaoh took Sarah into his house, “the LORD plagued Pharaoh with great plagues, and his house, over the matter of Sarai, the wife of Abram” (Genesis 12:17). Here, we've got to read to the end to hear that “the LORD had closed all the wombs of the house of Abimelech over the matter of Sarah, the wife of Abraham” (Genesis 20:18). It was a fertility shutdown. And since we find out that Abimelech himself needs healing then, later retellers of the story sensibly inserted here “a grievous disease inflicted upon him by God,” such that “the physicians had already despaired of his life.”¹⁶ God is acting to protect his promises.

In Pharaoh's case, we were left in the dark as to how he figured out that Sarah was the occasion for the plagues; but here we needn't wonder how Abimelech learns it, since “God came to Abimelech in a dream by night and spoke to him” (Genesis 20:3).¹⁷ Abimelech is a rare recipient of divine revelation. What does God tell him by this dream? “He said to him, 'Behold, you are dead because of the woman whom you have taken, for she is married to a husband'” (Genesis 20:3). At this point, the author interjects to assure us: “Now, Abimelech had not approached her” (Genesis 20:4). He makes sure “to forestall any doubt of Abraham's paternity of the child” whom Sarah is supposed to bear in nine months.¹⁸ That son can't be from Abimelech, because Abimelech – whether due to timing, to sleep, or due to an illness – never got a chance to interfere.

Confronted with what seems like a sentence already sure, Abimelech dares to object. “He said, 'Lord, will you slay a righteous nation?'” (Genesis 20:4). It's almost eerie how much Abimelech sounds like the Abraham we knew two chapters ago, who also challenged a threat of judgment on a city with his outburst at God, “Far be it from you to do such a thing as this, to slay the righteous with the wicked!” (Genesis 18:25).¹⁹ Abimelech is insisting that Gerar is no Sodom; but will God treat Gerar like Sodom anyway? If Sodom couldn't be spared for a few righteous, will God go even further and condemn a wholly righteous nation for one man's wrong?

And not only a wrong, Abimelech protests, but an accidental wrong. “Did not he himself say to me, 'She is my sister'? And she also herself said, 'He is my brother!'” (Genesis 20:5). Abimelech pleads invincible ignorance as an excuse for taking a married woman. He didn't know that that's what he was doing. More than that, he just couldn't know; it was deliberately hidden from him. So, Abimelech reasons, “in the blamelessness of my heart and the cleanness of my hands I have done this” (Genesis 20:5). Abimelech presents himself like the psalmist who sang: “Who can discern his errors? Cleanse me from hidden faults! Keep back your servant from presumptuous sins.... Then I shall be blameless, and clean of great transgression” (Psalm 19:12-13).

God accepts that, at least in part: “Also do I know that you have done this in the blamelessness of your heart” (Genesis 20:6). “Abimelech acts very differently from Pharaoh,” to whom God couldn't say this.²⁰ He didn't act from malice or from lust, but from an innocent ignorance. At the same time, God declines to confirm the part about Abimelech having clean hands.²¹ Just because you have a good excuse, just because you didn't know what you were doing, it doesn't make what you did not wrong, Abimelech. God will later lay down a whole chapter for Moses about what people should do who “sin by mistake” and don't know it until later on (Leviticus 4). Abimelech's in that boat. He might be inwardly blameless, but he's objectively sinned, even if by mistake.

Abimelech in his protest spoke two 'alsos,' so now God adds a second one to his reply: “And also I withheld you from sinning against me; I absolutely did not let you touch her” (Genesis 20:6). By discipline and dream, God made sure that Abimelech wouldn't be an unwitting adulterer; he kindly preserved Abimelech from that degree of escalation. But this means Abimelech can't necessarily take credit for not doing it; he might well have gone on to commit adultery, had God not stepped in to prevent it – it isn't Abimelech's virtue that's credited.²²

But now Abimelech knows Sarah's a married woman, stolen from her husband. There are only two things he can do with that knowledge. “And you return the wife of the man, for he is a prophet and he will pray for you and you will live; but if you do not return her, know that you shall surely die, you and all who are yours” (Genesis 20:7). Keeping Sarah means the death penalty – God uses the same words here he used in Eden about the consequences of forbidden fruit (Genesis 2:17). And just like Lot had the chance to rescue “all who are yours” in the city (Genesis 19:12), Abimelech has the chance to doom “all who are yours” in the kingdom,²³ to say nothing of Sarah then meriting the death penalty (Deuteronomy 22:22) – nullifying the redemptive plan. Or Abimelech can release Sarah, undoing the wrong he's done.²⁴ If Abimelech sets things right with Abraham, Abraham is positioned to set things right between Abimelech and God, yielding life in place of death.

So ends Abimelech's remarkable dream. Now, I don't know if any of you have ever had a dream like his – one where you hear the genuine voice of God breaking in, undisguised. I have. And while I don't care to share with the public what God told me, I can say that the voice was unmistakable and that the experience definitely has the feel of setting foot on holy ground. Suffice it to say, when Abimelech woke up, he remembered distinctly each and every word God had said; he couldn't not. But what will he do with this awesome message?

We're encouraged when “Abimelech rose early in the morning” (Genesis 20:8), the same way Abraham did to find out the fate of Sodom (Genesis 19:27), a hallmark of an eagerness to obey (Genesis 21:14; 22:3). So “Abimelech acts at once and without hesitation to do precisely as he was instructed” by God in his dream.²⁵ He “called all his servants and told them all these things in their hearing” (Genesis 20:8), unloading the fresh news onto the officials who aid him in administering his little kingdom. It's only fair, since they've been affected and are in the crosshairs too. “And the men feared exceedingly” (Genesis 20:8). Feared what? The God of Abimelech's dream. Now, remember what Abraham says he thought, that “surely there is no fear of God in this place” (Genesis 20:11). But this overturns Abraham's assumption: not just the king but his whole court is God-fearing!²⁶ If Abraham's a Jonah at the moment, Gerar's acting like his Nineveh.

With the royal court informed, “Abimelech called Abraham” (Genesis 20:9). Having lived this before in Egypt, Abe's no doubt got a guess where this is going. As Pharaoh asked Abram three questions, so Abimelech asks three as well. Pharaoh led off with, “What is this you have done to me?” (Genesis 12:18), but Abimelech opens, “What have you done to us?” (Genesis 20:9). Pharaoh was concerned for himself; Abimelech's heart is for his people.²⁷ Pharaoh's second question was, “Why did you not tell me that she was your wife?” (Genesis 12:18), but Abimelech follows with, “How have I sinned against you, that you have brought on me and my kingdom a great sin?” (Genesis 20:9). Abimelech is more reflective, more theological. He wants to know if there's some way he previously offended Abraham that makes sense of this deception as a retaliation. And he drives home that Abraham's trickery could've been the first domino in a chain knocking down a whole kingdom.

So, where Pharaoh leapt straight to his third question, Abimelech makes a declaration: “Deeds that ought not to be done, you have done to me!” (Genesis 20:9). Now it's personal. So harsh is Abimelech's language here that, on Abimelech's telling, Abraham comes out looking not just like Lot but like a man of Sodom!²⁸ Over the top? Maybe. But it's the cutting correction Abraham needs to shake and shock him from this habit. Now, Pharaoh never gave Abraham a chance to answer, but after a pause to calm himself, Abimelech reaches his third question. “Abimelech said to Abraham, 'What did you see, that you did this thing?'” (Genesis 20:10). Was there something Abraham observed when he reached Abimelech's kingdom that provoked such a response – something it might be Abimelech's job to fix? Or maybe did Abraham, as a prophet, have some vision that inspired his conduct? Is there something he knows that Abimelech doesn't but needs to? What a humble query!

The short answer to that one is no. We've already taken a sneak peak at Abraham's “montage of excuses.”²⁹ He first admits he told himself, convinced himself, that Gerar couldn't possibly be a God-fearing place – that it had to be a twin of Sodom, beyond a shadow of a doubt; he was totally wrong.³⁰ It's himself he needs to examine. Sensing his first excuse falls flat, he claims that, on a technicality, he didn't lie, as he and Sarah are siblings first. Of course, it doesn't make a difference, because Abraham still set Gerar up for a downfall. Besides, admitting his wife and sister are one and the same isn't exactly helping him escape the shadow of Sodom or of Lot!

So he adds a third excuse: that Gerar wasn't special, that this was a habit he built up “at every place to which we come,” a “kindness” he'd requested of Sarah to preserve his life in the land where they were. His phrase here echoes Lot's gratitude for the angels' kindness (Genesis 19:19).³¹ But Abraham points the finger at God here as “the ultimate cause of his mistake.”³² Abraham's excuses sound as lame as Adam's excuses in chapter 3.³³ To make things worse, Abraham abruptly uses a plural – he literally says, “gods caused me to wander” (Genesis 20:13) – thus severely compromising his witness before Abimelech and maybe his entire journey out of Ur.³⁴

Abraham's defense of himself is feeble. His heart is far from blameless. Abimelech could sit in judgment as the king – but Abimelech's hands aren't so clean. He's wronged Abraham unknowingly, even as Abraham wronged him and the whole kingdom unthinkingly. So Abimelech makes a choice. In Egypt, Pharaoh enriched Abraham in advance by giving a large dowry (Genesis 12:16). Here, the gifts enter now: “Abimelech took sheep and oxen and manservants and maidservants, and he gave them to Abraham, and he returned Sarah his wife to him” (Genesis 20:14). Recognizing that Gerar is no Sodom, Abraham accepts both Sarah and the gifts.³⁵ What's more, Abimelech tells Sarah that he's also given Abraham “a thousand pieces of silver,” and “behold, it is a covering of eyes for all who are with you” (Genesis 20:16). What exactly that means isn't sure, but presumably this somehow will protect Sarah's reputation and sweep this incident under the rug.

In between those gifts and gestures, Abimelech addresses Abraham's future. Pharaoh, after berating the couple, banished them from Egypt, expelling them as unwanted menaces. But that's not how things play out in this land of the Philistines. In fact, “Abimelech said, 'Behold, my land is before you; settle wherever is good in your eyes” (Genesis 20:15). Which he does, we'll later find, about fifteen miles southeast of Gerar. Instead of an eviction, Abraham has legal resident status. Abimelech is seeking good terms of coexistence.

Of course, he needs something. He doesn't need to show contrition, since his blameless heart incurred no subjective guilt. But in sharing the dream and admitting the truth, he confessed his sin. In returning Sarah to her rightful husband, he amended his sin. In these gifts to appease Abraham, he made reparation for his sin. All that stands between him and absolution is intercession. And that's where the prophet of God comes in.³⁶

So, as God had assured Abimelech in his dream (Genesis 20:7), “Abraham prayed to the God, and God healed Abimelech, and also healed his wife and concubines so that they bore children” (Genesis 20:17). In spite of all his personal ethical problems here, Abraham's position as a prophet makes him a successful intercessor with God, just like Judas could baptize and exorcise – it's the office that's at work, not its holder. But the result has to change the way Abimelech and his court view Abraham, whose prayer so promptly yields a miracle.³⁷ More importantly, it has to change the way Abraham views Abraham. He entered this chapter bitter and defeated, for his ministry had been a failure. But now, before his very eyes, that's proven untrue: he finally sees the fruit.

In the end, it looks like God allowed all this to happen again, for Abraham to revisit his old bad habits, so that it would cure him of them once and for all. God has meant this ordeal for Abraham's good – not just to enrich him (though it does), but to restore his self-confidence as an intercessor, as a man called to be a man of God. In this risky saga, God permitted all its twists and turns as the means to rebuild Abraham's faith after a trauma. In doing that, “God changed Abraham from an agent of curse to an agent of blessing,” never to turn back again.³⁸

Here's the point where we jump a few years into the future. In between Abraham gains a son, and he surrenders a son to the hands of providence. It's such an eventful few years that we'll spend nearly all next month poking around them. But through them, Abraham is being remolded, reforged. And at the end of those years, Abraham will come face-to-face with King Abimelech again. Only this time, Abraham is a new man, a virtuous man, a man confident and fulfilled in life despite the losses he's known; now he's a man who can look a king in the eye, as he did in the day long before when he chased down emperors and rebuffed the king of Sodom.³⁹

Now “at that time, Abimelech and Phicol the commander of his hosts spoke to Abraham” (Genesis 21:22), out where Abraham dwells. The fact that Abimelech brought his military chief to the conversation feels “ominous, perhaps threatening.”⁴⁰ Abraham has been prospering, and his prosperous presence registers as a potential threat back in Gerar, since Abraham's continued success might have him on track to rival Abimelech in Abimelech's own land or even take it.⁴¹ Abimelech and Phicol confess, “God is with you in all you do” (Genesis 21:22). These Gentiles acknowledge the God who is active in Abraham's life, who is revealing himself through the blessings given to Abraham.⁴² Abimelech both fears this and wants this. “Now therefore, swear to me here by God that you will not deal falsely with me or with my descendants or with my posterity, but according to the kindness that I have done to you, you will do to me and to the land where you have sojourned” (Genesis 21:23).

Abimelech brings up the memory of their last encounter. It would be fair to say Abimelech found Abraham to deal falsely then, and he doesn't want a repeat. He knows Abraham's a prophet and a blessed man, but doesn't know if Abraham can be trusted. Abraham had asked Sarah for a kindness in helping him deceive to save his life, but Abimelech then did him an honest kindness by granting him legality, safety, freedom. Since Abimelech was kind and merciful, Abraham should return that with loyal kindness to Abimelech and his people. Abimelech wants him to swear an oath in the sight of God to deal faithfully, not just with Abimelech himself, but with his successors – sons, grandsons, you get it. Which means that “Abimelech believes that Abraham will have an enduring posterity” of his own, thriving in the land during the days of Abimelech Jr. and Abimelech III.⁴³

Abraham agrees without hesitation: “I swear” (Genesis 21:24). He has no problem swearing an oath, in the sight of God, to be honest and faithful in his dealings with Abimelech – because Abraham is recommitted to keeping the way of the LORD (Genesis 18:19). At the same time, Abraham has a bone to pick about that alleged kindness of Abimelech's. “Abraham reproved Abimelech about a well of water that the servants of Abimelech had stolen” (Genesis 21:25). No wonder things got so tense Abimelech brought his muscle to the meeting!⁴⁴ A well was hard work to dig, usually at least seven feet across and maybe a hundred feet deep, sometimes through tough rock, to reach the water table; and even after all that work, you could never be sure you'd hit that water.⁴⁵ Especially in the Negeb, the general scarcity of water made well access a life-or-death issue for a man of flocks and herds.⁴⁶ Abraham had dug a life-saving well, and yet Abimelech's own servants had then taken it from him and blocked his access to it. This was the kind of thing wars could be started over.

Now it's Abimelech's turn to be on the defensive, with three excuses built around two 'alsos.'⁴⁷ First, “I do not know who has done this thing!” Abimelech once again grounds his defense in ignorance. “And also, you didn't tell me!” As before Abimelech's defense is that Abraham withheld information, this time by not reporting the theft. “And also, I haven't heard of it until today” (Genesis 21:26). If Abimelech's servants did this, they must have lost their fear of God and gone rogue. Abimelech implies he would've fixed things if he'd known.

As Abimelech once kindly accepted Abraham's lame excuses, so Abraham accepts Abimelech's defense. Both have striven for moral ground against the other, and both are now better for it: “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another” (Proverbs 27:17).⁴⁸ Now “Abraham took sheep and oxen,” probably children of those Abimelech gave him, “and he gave them to Abimelech,” so that “the both of them cut a covenant” by dividing the animals and walking through them to seal the deal (Genesis 21:27). But also, from the sheep, “Abraham set apart seven ewe lambs of the flock,” not slaying and splitting them (Genesis 21:28). Abimelech is as confused as we are: “Why these seven ewe lambs that you've set apart?” (Genesis 21:29). Abraham explains: “In order that these seven ewe lambs you will take from my hand, that you may be a witness for me that I dug this well” (Genesis 21:30). Abraham wants royal recognition of his ownership rights to the well and its land; Abimelech's acceptance of the lambs, in public, will commit him to guaranteeing that claim. Like the silver that vindicated Sarah's honor, these lambs vindicate Abraham's truth – and it's a generous move by Abraham, since usually it was the thief who was obliged to give seven ewe lambs to the victim.⁴⁹ These lambs will mean honesty, fair dealing, agreement, good communication, a renewed relationship.⁵⁰ And Abimelech accepts them.

With that, “both of them swore an oath, and they cut a covenant” (Genesis 21:31-32), “a pact of mutual respect and recognition.”⁵¹ Instead of Abraham's one-way oath, now they “swore a mutual oath.”⁵² This covenant will mean mutual kindness, mutual faithfulness, mutual friendship – the roads where blessings drive to and fro. And this is a template for how things were supposed to be: the nations, seeing God with his holy people in all they do, would seek covenants of peace and friendship, acknowledging the holy nation's destiny, and striving to be blessed by God through fellowship with them.

Peace, kindness, friendship between Abraham and the land of the Philistines – it points to a different way things could've been: a world where Samson and Delilah enjoy a long and happy marriage, where David and Goliath pal around and play board games, where these peoples embrace in the blessing of peace. We know that's not how history later played out, but it doesn't at all lessen the magnitude of what Abraham has here begun. I love the way one rabbi puts it: here, “Abraham converts a moment of confrontation into a moment of covenant.”⁵³ In light of everything we hear about in the news, if there's anything we need to learn how to do today, that just might be the thing.

As a result of their covenant, “he called that place Beersheba” (Genesis 21:31). It's got a double meaning. The words for 'seven' and 'oath' in Hebrew sound so much alike that 'Beersheba' could mean either 'Well of the Oath' or 'Well of Seven. It's the Well of Oath because Abraham and Abimelech swore oaths there to treat each other kindly, truly, faithfully; it's the Well of Seven because it was secured for Abraham through seven ewe lambs. It now becomes Abraham's “first piece of property in the land” he can call his own before God and man.⁵⁴ With a son, land, peace, and prosperity, “it appears the covenant promises are coming to reality.”⁵⁵

And so, while Abimelech and Phicol withdraw to Philistia, Abraham “planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba..., and Abraham sojourned in the land of the Philistines many days” (Genesis 21:33-34). The tamarisk is a great choice: it thrives in the northern Negeb due to its deep roots, its leaves make soft food for flocks, and they bring precious shade.⁵⁶ This tree, though, will take years to mature; it's a commitment for “many days” indeed.

And there, at this tree, as if it were an altar, Abraham “called on the name of the LORD, the Everlasting God” (Genesis 21:34). The last time Abraham faced kings and their armies, he came away with a blessing in the name of El Elyon, 'God Most High' (Genesis 14:15-20), a title emphasizing God's transcendence over space and supremacy over every obstacle Abraham could face. Now, though, he worships El Olam, 'God Eternal,' a title emphasizing God's transcendence over time and his “long-term faithfulness” through the twists and turns of life for Abraham.⁵⁷ This God will watch over and enforce the covenant through the generations. This God will see to it that Abraham and his seed are a permanent presence in the land of promise, rooted as deeply as a tamarisk tree, as refreshing as a well of water for the world, able to make clean the hands of Abimelech and more.

Where Abraham stands now is that, thanks to God Eternal, Abraham has found healing from his trauma, has forgiven himself for his self-diagnosed failures, has renewed his relationship with God, has learned how to live honestly and confidently and peacefully with human beings. And that's a good word. But the last word is seven – in the original Hebrew, this story uses Abimelech's and Abraham's names each seven times, which is no happy little accident, especially when Abraham then offers seven ewe lambs to secure for himself the Well of Seven!⁵⁸ Abraham may be sojourning here under a tree of his own planting and by a well of his own digging, but it might as well be a God-given tree of life and spring of living water, because this peace covenant, this fulfillment of promise, is saturated in sabbath. That's where this arc has been driving. Abraham is tasting sabbath enjoyment.

Abraham's security in Abimelech's kingdom was bought with a human oath sworn over seven lambs. But our security in God's kingdom was bought with a divine oath sworn over the Lamb of God, given for us and “made perfect forever” (Hebrews 7:28). “So then, there remains a sabbath rest for the people of God” (Hebrews 4:9), a Beersheba where we can find our healing and our peace, our forgiveness and our self-forgiveness, our tree of life and our fountain of every blessing. He is God Eternal, who “will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you” (1 Peter 5:10). Amen.

Rock and Wine

We've read that “all Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching” (2 Timothy 3:16), but today, as we hear from Genesis 19:30-38, we may be putting that conviction to the test. But first we have to understand how we got here. Decades earlier, Lot parted ways with his uncle Abraham, choosing to travel east to claim the Jordan River Valley; he nestled in a rich basin there, and inched his tents down to Sodom. Then came an invasion from Iran – that's where Chedorlaomer was from, remember – which nearly destroyed everything, until Abraham came to the rescue and defeated them and set Lot and the Sodomites free. Lot returned to the city and resumed his life there, and the city continued to just degenerate around him. Now two angels went there in disguise to test the city and see if there was any way to justify God's sparing it the consequences of its toxic culture. Subsequent events made clear that there wasn't. And so the angels revealed to Lot that the end was nigh, and that he should gather those who'd follow him and make his exit a hasty one. With enough poking and prodding, Lot left Sodom behind at the last minute; Sodom and three associated cities, plus the entire basin where they rested, were stricken with divine disaster, scorching flames and stinking sulfur bombarding it all from above like missiles, leaving an ex-Eden a desolate waste.

Lot, his wife, and his daughters fled. Lot is elsewhere in the Bible described as righteous (2 Peter 2:7), and while nothing of the sort is said of his wife, God had promised to spare any righteous 'found' in Sodom (Genesis 18:32), while Lot's daughters were 'found' with him (Genesis 19:15), hinting that, at least by Sodomite standards, they're what counts for righteous in this chapter.¹ As we also heard last Sunday, Lot's wife failed to persevere to salvation (Genesis 19:26), but Lot and his daughters made it to the city of Bela (Genesis 14:2), which they'd renamed Zoar on account of its little size (Genesis 19:22-23).

Remember, though, that Zoar wasn't where Lot was originally meant to go. When the angels had dragged him and his family out of Sodom, what did they tell him? “Escape for your life! Don't look behind you, and don't stop anywhere in the plain; escape to the hills, lest you be swept away!” (Genesis 19:17). It was Lot who pled that the hill life just wasn't his style. “I am not able to escape to the hills, lest the evil cling to me and I die. Behold, please, this city is near enough to flee to, and it is a little one. Let me please escape there – isn't it little? – and my soul shall live” (Genesis 19:19-20). He appealed twice to the town's tiny size, as if that made it too insignificant for the Lord to judge.² But the Lord had indulged Lot, agreeing to spare the city as a safe zone for Lot & Co. (Genesis 19:21). So that's where Lot had gone, “a tiny spot forming an oasis in the flames.”³

Now, though, when we pick up with Lot an unknown amount of time later, “Lot went out of Zoar, and he dwelt in the hills” (Genesis 19:30), the place he was previously afraid to go (Genesis 19:19). This man can't make up his mind, can he? But now as he leaves, the catastrophe is over. Without time constraints, he's got a free choice where to travel. So consider what we could have read here. We could have read, “Lot went out of Zoar, and he went back to Harran, and he dwelt with his uncle Nahor.” Or, more easily, we could have read, “Lot went out of Zoar, and he dwelt with Abraham his uncle at Mamre.” Remember, the reason Lot left Abraham was because natural resources couldn't support both their herds of livestock. Well, now Lot has no herds, no flocks. So the prodigal nephew to opt to head home instead of settling amidst the pigsties of a far country. But Lot does not do that. Consciously or not, he (fatefully) avoids reunion with the House of Abraham.⁴ And now he trades Zoar, the destination he chose, for the same mountain he refused to ascend when the Lord first bade him to.⁵

But why make any trade at all? Lot picked Zoar; why give it up? “Zoar did not prove to be what he expected.”⁶ How do we know? Because, it turns out, “he was afraid to dwell in Zoar” (Genesis 19:30). The place he chose as refuge, the place he begged to be, scared him – and the Bible doesn't lay out exactly why. Maybe he realized too late that a town can be as corrupt as the big city, that there's a reason Zoar sat at the same defendants' table with the big boys – the Zoarite mob showed strong suspicion to these sole survivors of Sodom,⁷ and Lot worried “perhaps now the inhabitants would turn on them” if they tried to stay long.⁸ Or maybe Lot retained “a lively fear of the punishment inflicted on Sodom” and didn't think Zoar was safe for long,⁹ especially if he could still feel tremors from the earthquake trigger God pulled to set the fires in motion.¹⁰ Maybe, given his wife's fateful glance back to Sodom, Lot decided urban life was too strong a temptation to withstand if he and his assimilated into Zoar.¹¹ Or maybe a certain pillar of salt loomed outside the city gate, and the sight of it day in and day out was so heartbreaking that Lot's resolve crumbled in terror of the inevitability of loss.

Whatever his rationale, Lot quit town and headed for the hills. In the eastern mountains, not that far away, “he dwelt in a cave, he and his two daughters” (Genesis 19:30), perhaps “in extreme isolation and solitude” from society.¹² Consider what they've been through. Take Lot – once a wealthy chief, a prominent urban figure, now suddenly cast down as an impoverished caveman. Every neighbor he interacted with during those years is dead – that'd yield serious survivor's guilt. Then he's been freshly bereaved of his wife of many years; those thus widowed know that pain. One ancient reader described Lot as now “severely distressed and beside himself after losing everything all at once.”¹³ Isn't that right? It's like his plot points are ripped from the prologue to Job!

And I would submit to you this morning that, whatever else this story is also about, Lot was sorely heartbroken and scared out of his mind. He'd been scared even before the fires fell, anxious over falling short in attaining his salvation. After reaching haven in Zoar, he'd become afraid again, “in the utmost fear and anguish.”¹⁴ He's drowning in his sorrows, he's crippled by his fear. So he chooses a cave, “the refuge of wild creatures,” a place decidedly beyond urban civilization.¹⁵ People in the Bible tend to hide in caves temporarily when at their most desperate (1 Samuel 13:6).¹⁶ But Lot puts down roots there. Caves were traditionally places to bury the dead (Genesis 23:19), being suitable symbols for the underworld. Functionally, “to live in a cave is to live in death.”¹⁷ Choosing the caveman life is Lot's retreat from the world of the living; he makes his home in a tomb.¹⁸ Effectively, like Job cursing the day of his birth, Lot has decided that death is the only option for peace and rest – so he lives as though dead.¹⁹ And he's “allowed himself to become oblivious to the surrounding reality.”²⁰

This is a poignant profile of grief and fear and despair. Lot's grief has greyed out the world to him – that much is only natural. Lot's fear has infected his decision-making. He views all options as dangerous. He's fixated on worst-case scenarios. But what really gets him, when he gets to the cave, is despair. “There, isolated from mankind..., he passed a miserable existence.”²¹ It's understandable for Lot to be depressed. Of course he would be. Life is flavorless without his salty spouse. But Lot has chosen now despair. He gives up interest in present and future, forsakes his stake in the world, cancels his heart's subscription to hope. He nails shut his horizons. Not so many verses ago, Lot credited God's mercy and God's grace as keeping him alive (Genesis 19:19); now, having seen judgment cut too close, a sullen Lot lets go of the divine lifeline; he conforms his appetite to the falsehood that there's for him nothing to live for, no hope for him in the God of Abraham – now that's despair.²²

Now let's step into the sandals of Lot's daughters. These girls grew up in Sodom; it's probably the only place they've ever been. But every familiar landmark is ashes now, dust in the wind. They'd been engaged to be married; their fiancés are now both dead, burned to a crisp. During their escape, their own mother was caught up in the destruction, entombed in a pillar of salt. As they came to Zoar, “they saw the fire, they saw the sulphurous flames, they saw all things devastated.”²³ They, too, are traumatized – and still likely in their upper teen years. Plus, the dad they lean on has stopped being a pillar of their family, at the very time mom takes 'pillar of the family' too literally. They've seen their solo dad in an absolute panic, watched him break down, felt the void created in their lives as he withdraws. What do they take away? Lot's fear is bound to be infectious. Read this as a tale of what goes wrong when fear metastasizes throughout the family body.

Into the void of responsibility, the firstborn sister asserts herself by default. “The firstborn said to the younger, 'Our father is old'” (Genesis 19:31). Just look at Lot. He's worn out, broken by the passage of time and all its troubles. Given his probable outlook, his daughters have to take seriously the prospect that his time is short.²⁴ It is beyond their fear-tinted imaginations to suppose that he can be pulled back from the pit, that he has a chance to renew his youth like the eagle's, to start over and contribute again to the world (Psalm 103:4-5).

She goes on: “And there is not a man on earth...” (Genesis 19:31) – that's not the end of her sentence, but let's pause the tape there. We mentioned last Sunday that, almost inevitably, these chapters are shaped like the story of Noah. There's a society corrupted beyond renewal, the choice to save somebody by extraction with their family, the falling of judgment, the aftermath. Lot's daughters definitely feel the resonance with the Flood. Now, consider how that resonance is impacted when Lot's daughters contract their father's fear vision. Might that vision tempt them to draw the parallels closer than they need to be?

Nearly all readers of this story through the ages have reckoned that Lot's daughters themselves reckoned “that total destruction had taken place and no one was left alive,”²⁵ “that the whole of humanity had perished,”²⁶ that the three in the cave were “the last humans on earth.”²⁷ For “they thought that all men had perished, just as the Sodomites had, and that God's wrath had descended on the entire earth,”²⁸ so that “all creation had come to an end in a flood of fire as the generation of Noah did in a flood of water.”²⁹ Of course, creation hadn't yet come to its fiery end. God's wrath wasn't on the whole earth. Humanity hadn't all but perished, and they weren't the lone survivors. “However, like Lot, they misperceive and misjudge,” reading the world through their father's fear and using that to extrapolate from the desolation they've seen and heard.³⁰

In the apparent end of the world, Lot has given up hope; a new world is the farthest thing from his mind. What about his daughters? What matters to them now? The firstborn daughter makes a comment, at the end of her speech to little sister, about the paramount goal of “preserving seed alive” (Genesis 19:32). That's exactly what Noah was called to do with the animals on the ark, “to preserve alive their seed on the face of all the earth” (Genesis 7:3).³¹ So this daughter is stepping up to take over the Noah role from her despairing dad, and her focus is on preserving alive human seed, her father's family line. The hour seems dire, the stakes seem high, but “they desired that the world should continue to exist.”³² Though infected by fear, they reject Lot's despair.

So their motive in what follows – remember as we hear the scripture – is a good goal. At minimum, they want the continuation of their family, which is “human and a natural inclination.”³³ “They acted thus to prevent the extinction of the race,”³⁴ maybe even working “for the conservation of the human race.”³⁵ It is unquestionably a noble motive. So was Lot's determination to protect the guests who entered his house. But we know that, if there's one irritating trait Lot has, it's his notorious weakness in moral reasoning. He shoots for good ends, “sincerely desiring to do right, but failing miserably” due to some misjudgment, some false premise, some shocking blind spot in his conscience.³⁶ It's what makes him such a parody of Abraham. As his daughters begin to discuss how life can be preserved alive in a desolate world, we have to ask: will they show wisdom in their moral reasoning, or have they inherited or even (God forbid!) amplified their father's misdirection?

Well, we get a hint from the elder's comment, that the trouble is that “there is not a man on earth to come in to us after the way of all the earth” (Genesis 19:31). Focus on that last clause. Do you remember Abraham's aim? His task was “to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice” (Genesis 18:19). Here we have a hint already that Lot's daughters are missing the mark. Where Abraham is to teach his house the way of God, “the daughters of Lot still seek the way of all the earth.”³⁷ Widespread human custom is the standard by which Lot's firstborn daughter evaluates what's worth doing and how to get there.³⁸ When Abraham follows the way of the LORD, he perpetuates his seed supernaturally; but when Lot's daughters assume the truthfulness of their post-apocalyptic nightmare, they have a subnatural and uncustomary means in mind for perpetuating seed.³⁹

Flash back to Noah and his family leaving the ark. What followed their salvation? Well, after the covenant, we found a troubling episode where Noah drank wine to the point where he passed out in his tent; and his son Ham, chancing on his father disrobed and vulnerable, took advantage of him – the details are hotly debated, but some sexual overtones are clear (Genesis 9:20-22). So if the fires of Sodom replay the waters of Noah, and if Lot's escape is a replay of the ark, and if they're now on the mountain as Noah and his family were, then we expect the plot to continue with flowing wine and a family scandal.⁴⁰ Which is exactly what then happens.

We already knew Lot's firstborn believed the principle that custom makes right. Now she unites it with a new principle, that necessity makes right, which calls for “exceptional measures in exceptional times,” so exceptional that they suspend other moral norms – or so she thinks.⁴¹ By these principles' powers combined, the young lady can rationalize her plan – actually, any plan – as a selfless act of self-sacrifice for the greater good.⁴² Having children is what everybody does; there is only one chance to make that happen (again, so she thinks); therefore, it must be done. So, she says: “Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve alive seed from our father” (Genesis 19:32).

...Ew, to put it mildly.  Today's passage is “certainly disturbing.”⁴³ The story's action is littered with unthinkable “crimes, transgressions, and taboos.”⁴⁴ Remember, as we read, that “these things are narrated, not praised.”⁴⁵ The firstborn daughter of Lot proposes here “an immoral scheme, born out of fear, not faith.”⁴⁶ But that's just the point. That's what spreading fear can do. If not for Lot's fear infecting his daughters, if not for the stage set by Lot's plunge into despair, this ugly tale would have been a much different thing – perhaps something glorious and triumphant. But this most definitely isn't that.

And yet there's a tragic poetry to it. Earlier in the chapter, when Lot confronted the men of Sodom by night, insisting he couldn't surrender to them the male strangers who'd taken refuge in his home, he offered them an alternative to satisfy their appetites: “Behold please, I have two daughters who have not known any man; let me please bring them out to you, and do with them according to what is good in your eyes” (Genesis 19:8). He was willing, in desperation, to serve up his own daughters as substitute victims – as St. Augustine puts it, he “wanted to prostitute his daughters as an exchange.”⁴⁷ Lot's offer valued neither his daughters' chastity, nor their safety, nor their dignity, nor their personhood. Now, they “in effect reverse the power dynamic” from that night, turning the tables on Lot.⁴⁸ Earlier, a father offered his daughters as victims; now the daughters scheme over that same father, to exchange their virginity not for the security of guests (as he planned) but to salvage a future they see he will not fight for. Some call it “a deed of fitting payback” against Lot,⁴⁹ “poetic justice for Lot's previous behavior,”⁵⁰ in that “he experiences what he had proposed his daughters should experience.”⁵¹ In doing so, their plan ultimately makes a real man of Sodom out of him in the end.⁵² They may not have connived at this connection consciously, but sin's consequences have a tendency to loop back around on us.⁵³ What Lot was willing to subject his daughters to at the hands of others, they will now do to him, and make him do to them.

So the plan is put in motion. The firstborn daughter had proposed a conspiracy of sisters: “Let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him” (Genesis 19:32). How'd it play out? Well, “they made their father drink wine that night” (Genesis 19:33). It likely wasn't hard to get Lot imbibing, given how depressed he was.⁵⁴ At his daughters' suggestion, “Lot drank in order to forget,” and forgot to slam on the brakes while yet he could.⁵⁵ For “when hope is given up, men rush headlong into sin, and... to despair is to fall into hell.”⁵⁶ (No wonder they call despair a mortal sin.) The daughters' plot couldn't have succeeded if they “had not first made him drunk and overcome by sleep.”⁵⁷ If only Lot had kept sober! If only he'd known when to quit, if only he'd cared!  But such is despair.

So then “the firstborn,” though until now a virgin, “takes the sexual initiative” as the active party – she “went in and lay with her father” (Genesis 19:33).⁵⁸ Note how the proposal was 'we,' but she goes in solo; little sister helped with step 1, but backed out of step 2.⁵⁹ The firstborn daughter did that part alone. And because Lot was so severely intoxicated, “he did not know when she lay down or when she arose” (Genesis 19:33). “Lot was deceived through sleep.”⁶⁰ Maybe he was scarcely conscious at all, exhibiting involuntary reactions to stimuli.⁶¹ Or maybe, in the darkness of eyes and minds, he was so drunk he forgot his wife had died, and instinctively reacted as though she were back with him, and, on waking, assumed it was a dream. Either way, in one ancient reader's colorful but creepy phrase, the firstborn daughter “stole seed from the sleeping farmer.”⁶²

Here, by the way, is a big difference between Lot and Noah. When Noah fell into a drunken stupor undressed in his tent, Ham entered and Ham departed, but when Noah had sobered up, he “knew what his youngest son had done to him” (Genesis 9:24). But when Lot awoke the next morning with a heavy hangover, he was oblivious, having zero knowledge of what his eldest daughter had done to him.⁶³ Lot, in the place of Noah, is no Noah.

The next day, as the sisters sneak away to talk, “the firstborn said to the younger, 'Behold, I lay last night with my father'” (Genesis 19:34). The little sister doesn't ask, content to leave the matter in the dark night past, forgotten. But the firstborn initiates a new day's deeds.⁶⁴ “Let us make him drink wine tonight also.” She's convinced Lot's none the wiser, that he'll fall for it again. “Then you go in and lie with him.” She isn't happy the younger daughter backed out; the firstborn insists her little sister be fully involved, that she double their chances “that we may preserve alive seed from our father” (Genesis 19:34). Switching adeptly from 'my' to 'our,' and from 'father' to simply 'him,' the firstborn shields her sister from thinking too hard about what this planned action will really entail.⁶⁵

So what happens next? “They also that night made their father drink wine, and the younger arose and lay with him, and he did not know when she lay down or when she arose” (Genesis 19:35). They've done it again! Ham violated his father Noah, but his elder brothers refused to imitate him; instead, they redressed his wrong. Lot's firstborn daughter violated her father, and her younger sister reluctantly imitates her crime, redressing nothing. In their muddled way, they meant to be doing Lot a favor, after all.⁶⁶ But however well-meaning, both “Lot's daughters perpetrate sexual assault against their father..., sexual violence.”⁶⁷ Within this cave, each has committed incest and rape. To whatever extent Lot was active but delusional, he “committed incest with his daughters and did not know his mistake,”⁶⁸ being “the victim of a plot and cunningly ensnared.”⁶⁹

The bombardment of Sodom and Gomorrah has, sadly, not closed the door on the program of perversion they pioneered.⁷⁰ But this story is a complex one, full of sinful deeds and mitigating factors for everyone involved. Some readers have judged it a new frontier in human evil;⁷¹ others excused even the daughters' actions as an error born out of “simplicity and innocence.”⁷² Still others have hoped that the daughters would be forgiven their deed because of the merit they earned when Lot offered them as substitutes for angels, and that from then onward they lived a chaste and virtuous life.⁷³ Maybe that's so; maybe it isn't.

What is so is that their ends, very much not justifying the means, are nonetheless fulfilled. “Both the daughters of Lot conceived from their father” (Genesis 19:36) – a grotesque phrase. The next verse leaps forward nine months, leaving us to pause in the gap and wonder what went through Lot's mind when both daughters began to show their condition. Did he assume at first that they'd been impregnated before they left Sodom?⁷⁴ Did he begin to question them? If he did, did they tell him the truth? When he learned the truth, did he have enough care in him left to be disgusted? Did he scream, did he cry, did he cast them out, did he forgive and reconcile himself to this? Or did he simply sink inward, cold and numb to it all, collapsing on his heart like a dying star?

Each pregnancy was carried to term. “The firstborn bore a son,” and “the younger bore a son” (Genesis 19:37-38). Two new boys, simultaneously sons and grandsons of Lot, offspring of the house of Terah, second cousins to Israel. Who are they? “The firstborn bore a son, and she called his name Moab” (Genesis 19:37). The name 'Moab' sounds like a Hebrew saying 'from father.' Here it's a name that quite openly proclaims what the daughter had done, clear and unapologetic.⁷⁵ And this boy “is the father of Moab to this day,” Moab being one of Israel's near neighbors. The Moabites lived in the mountains east of the Dead Sea, around a river valley called the Arnon. What about the little daughter, the more reluctant one? “The younger one also bore a son, and she called his name Ben-ammi” (Genesis 19:38), which in Hebrew sounds like 'son of my people,' a bit more circumspect a designation. “He is the father of the Sons of Ammon to this day,” that is, the Ammonites.⁷⁶ The Ammonites set up their kingdom north of Moab; their main river, the Jabbok, flowed west and fed into the Jordan. Their capital, Rabbah or Rabbat-Ammon, is to this day the capital city (Amman) of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

Here's where the story's been driving. For the first time, we're introduced to two of Israel's neighbor nations at their birth: Moabites and Ammonites, placed by the Bible on Abraham's family tree as sons-grandsons of his nephew Lot, conceived in a manner most foul. In the wake of Ham's sin against his intoxicated father Noah, we heard, “Cursed be Canaan,” Ham's son (Genesis 9:25). If the sin against the intoxicated father Lot is parallel, we're waiting to hear a word on Moab and Ammon – are they new Canaans, ripe for a similar curse?⁷⁷

Well, Genesis doesn't answer that question. Here's where Lot's story cuts off, “on an inglorious and ironic note,”⁷⁸ and perhaps “Lot's honor is shattered permanently.”⁷⁹ What happens to him personally after this, the Bible declines to report.⁸⁰ After Israel leaves Egypt, they sought to treat Lot's descendants kindly. They asked the Moabite king's permission to pass through his land, and when he said no, they went around his far east side instead (Judges 11:17-18). Israel even defeated their oppressor, the Amorite king Sihon (Numbers 21:24-30); and as Israel camped in the plains of Moab across the Jordan from Jericho (Numbers 22:1), God instructed, “Do not harass Moab or contend with them in battle, for I will not give you any of their land for a possession, for I have given Ar to the people of Lot for a possession” (Deuteronomy 2:9); and “when you approach the land of the Ammonites, do not harass them or contend with them, for I will not give you any of the land of the Ammonites as a possession, because I have given it to the sons of Lot for a possession” (Deuteronomy 2:18-19). So “Israel did not take away the land of Moab or the land of the Ammonites” (Judges 11:15).

Among Moses' final words, though, were a lament that, during Israel's move to their promised land, Moab and Ammon “did not meet you with bread and water on the way when you came out of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 23:4). They didn't remember the hospitality of their ancestor Lot; instead, they betrayed it, imitating the Sodomite side of their spiritual heritage instead.⁸¹ And that's saying nothing of how Lot's legacy of fear resurfaced in Moab, spurring them to attack Israel with ritual cursing and seductive sabotage (Numbers 22:4-6; 25:1-3). As a result, Moses laid down that “you shall not seek their peace or their prosperity all your days forever” (Deuteronomy 23:6). They'd become “Moab and Ammon, Israel's enemies.”⁸²

Things didn't go well from there. When Israel turned to evil, the Moabites and Ammonites “went and defeated Israel..., and the people of Israel served Eglon the king of Moab for eighteen years” (Judges 3:12-14). But God raised up Ehud to assassinate Eglon, rally Israel, subdue Moab, and secure peace for eighty years (Judges 3:15-20). When Israel worshipped “the gods of Moab and the gods of the Ammonites” (Judges 10:6), God sold them into “the hand of the Ammonites..., so that Israel was severely distressed” (Judges 10:7-9); then God raised up Jephthah to fight back, “so the Ammonites were subdued before the people of Israel” (Judges 11:32-33). King Saul “fought against Moab and against Ammon” (1 Samuel 14:47), as did David, who made Moabites and Ammonites into tribute-bringers or laborers for Israel (2 Samuel 8:2; 12:26-31). But Solomon “built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab and for Molech the abomination of the Ammonites, on the mountain east of Jerusalem” (1 Kings 11:7), tolerated for centuries until Josiah ended it (2 Kings 13:13).

Israel's kingdom broke in two, and both tangled with the Moabites and Ammonites. Israel held the Moabites down, and their king Mesha son of Chemoshyatti owed massive tribute to Israel's king Ahab; “but when Ahab died, the king of Moab rebelled against the king of Israel” (2 Kings 3:4), leading Ahab's son Jehoram to ally with the Jews. Elisha promised that “the LORD will also give the Moabites into your hand” (2 Kings 3:18), but Israel ultimately retreats (2 Kings 3:27). Archaeologists have since found Mesha's side of the story, where he claims Israel began oppressing Moab under Ahab's dad Omri because Chemosh was angry at his Moabite people, but now Chemosh had given Mesha victory “and Israel suffered everlasting destruction.” He brags about slaying the people of Gad east of Jordan and carrying away Israel's “Davidic altar hearth,” while from other Israelite shrines he took the vessels of the LORD and captured Israelites as forced laborers.⁸³ Amos and other prophets chronicled the atrocities of Moab and Ammon alike (Amos 1:13; 2:1).

A generation later, Judah's king Joash was assassinated by two of his servants, a Moabite and an Ammonite (2 Chronicles 24:25-26). A psalmist tells of a conspiracy of Moab and Ammon appealing to Assyria to save them from Israel, turning the vicious empire into “the strong arm of the children of Lot” (Psalm 83:5-8). Babylon was aided in conquering Jerusalem by “bands of the Moabites and bands of the Ammonites” (2 Kings 24:2), and they gloated over the Temple of God in ruins: “You clapped your hands and stamped your feet and rejoiced with all the malice in your soul against the land of Israel” (Ezekiel 25:3-6). For this, they should feel the fire their ancestresses escaped (Amos 1:14-15; 2:2-3), should be made as helpless as their father Lot (Jeremiah 48:26), should “flee [back] to Zoar” (Isaiah 15:5). Ultimately, when they stood against the rebuilding of the city of God, the LORD vowed that “Moab shall become like Sodom, and the Ammonites like Gomorrah” (Zechariah 2:9). Lot and his daughters only delayed their fate for a season, it seems. No wonder Moses had ruled that “no Ammonite or Moabite may enter the Assembly of the LORD; even to the tenth generation, none of them may enter the Assembly of the LORD forever” (Deuteronomy 23:3). What good could come of them?

But this is the Bible. Since when is bad news the whole of the story? Even the prophets who most fiercely called for fire and brimstone on Moab and Ammon heard a further word: “I will restore the fortunes of Moab in the latter days,” and “I will restore the fortunes of the Ammonites, declares the LORD” (Jeremiah 48:47; 49:6). In “the days when the judges ruled,” there was a woman of Moab who, widowed from her Jewish husband Mahlon, followed her mother-in-law Naomi to his hometown. There, her late father-in-law's kinsman Boaz purchased the family property and wedded the widow of Mahlon “to perpetuate the name of the dead in his inheritance” (Ruth 4:9-10). Boaz took Ruth, “and he went in to her, and the LORD gave her conception, and she bore a son” (Ruth 4:13), who turns out to have been a grandfather of David – meaning David was one-eighth Moabite, a descendant of Lot. When temporarily ousted by his son Absalom, one of those who sought David out to provide hospitality was the new Ammonite king Shobi (2 Samuel 17:27-29), recovering the better side of Lot's legacy. So when Solomon married wives from the nations, it was an Ammonite princess named Naamah who gave birth to his heir Rehoboam, who was therefore up to half Ammonite as well as one-thirty-second Moabite (1 Kings 14:21).

And from Rehoboam – and, therefore, from Moabite and Ammonite women, so from Lot and his two daughters – descended the line that led to the birth of Jesus Christ (Matthew 1:5-16). One ancient Christian wrote – and I almost can't believe it – that, as a kindness and reward for Lot, “God granted that... from the seed of Lot and Abraham,” Christ would be born, the Promised Seed brought into the world partly by what Lot's daughters had done.⁸⁴ Lot and his daughters objectively sinned (albeit with variously mitigated subjective culpability for said sins), and yet “by the Lord's coming,” which was in part their sin's consequence and effect, “the sins were forgiven them,” so that they can now freely “give thanks and rejoice in our salvation” and theirs!⁸⁵ This isn't just a story of a repulsive sin; it's a story of a happy fault (O felix culpa!) that called forth such an incredibly great Redeemer, a Redeemer sufficient to pour out spiritual hope mightier than despair and all-surpassing peace more potent than fear, a Redeemer born in a cave and buried in a cave and breaking forth in forgiveness and light and life! Let us dwell no more in darkness and its deeds, our terror and despair; let us resurface into redemption. Amen.