Genesis 19:31 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Genesis 19:31

Comments

Even going to the mountains does not help Lot, does not stop him getting drunk and being taken advantage of. He was involved in a very unhappy bringing about of offspring by his wicked daughters. Their evil way of proceeding was surely something they learnt in Sodom. He made himself vulnerable, and he was drunk, and so he gave rise to the Moabites and the Ammonites who were, ever after, the enemies of the household of faith. What a sad thing for a believer to have only bad issue, and no fruit in his life. That is what comes about by tangling with wicked culture and doing things to which God has said, ‘No’, and very, very firmly. But Abraham stayed out of the culture. God blessed him. He was the father of a multitude. He was the ancestor of that great descendant, Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Saviour of the world. He was the friend of God, the father of the faithful: so instrumental, and that is the implicit promise for us, if we are loyal to our calling as the seed of the woman and the seed of Christ.

Application

He got his daughters out of Sodom, but he did not get Sodom out of them. So with Christian parents who two-time the Lord in a worldly way. Lot drank away his sorrows, in a cave and got taken advantage of. We cannot go along with Francis Schaefer’s cultural mandate – the world is to be influenced by Christians at the cultural level. You cannot commend yourself to worldlings by being one of them, living alongside them. Two boys result from these shameful acts: but there is no shame about the names they are given. Moab means ‘seed of our father’; Benammi means ‘son of my people’. Both names draw attention to the terrible way they were conceived. This event shows again the necessity of obedience to the Lord in the life choices we make. Matthew Poole says, ‘How sad that Lot who had kept himself pure in Sodom, now succumbs to such great evil at the hands of his own children.’

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Genesis 19:31 Commentary and Bible Study