Confounded by Sin (Genesis 19:30-20:18)

From the outside looking in, sin baffles us. Contrary to what we would expect following God’s judgement on Sodom and Gomorrah, we see both Lot and Abraham falling into sin’s trap. After such a display of the hatred God has for the evil of sin, you would think that people would be scared straight. But not only does sin rear its ugly head, it does so in ways that make no sense!

Lot and his daughters are the only supposed “righteous” souls spared from the terror of Sodom’s destruction. Even Lot’s wife turned back to the horror they were fleeing. Not just the horror of the cataclysm that was happening there, but the horror of the evil practiced there in a life that she couldn’t imagine going without. But, once safe, Lot proceeds to impregnate both of his daughters. The way the story is told, they get him drunk and he is a witless participant in their scheme. But one can hardly imagine it going down so simply. It is as repulsive to an outside observer as anything that happened in the cities just destroyed.

The next story has Abraham falling into his own old, questionable habits. He again gets his wife—the wife of the promise—taken by a stronger man out of fear. We don’t get as many details this time around as we did in the Egyptian event, and that makes the whole story even more baffling. Hadn’t Abraham been here before? Had he not been visited multiple times by the Creator of the universe with promises of blessing and security? Had he not experienced one of the longest periods of silence from God for taking God’s plan into his own hands? Had he not just negotiated with God in the events of Sodom and Gomorrah? Had he not just seen the very real consequences of going against God? Why is he still trying to spare himself by passing Sarah off as anything but his wife?

And yet the lesson of the story here is that we are hopeless. As crazy as sin obviously is, we all are born prisoners of it. We all do things that to any outside observer are plain stupid. We are trapped in rebellion against God and His perfectly designed life for us. We all need to be rescued from ourselves. It is good to be reminded of that fact all along the way…