Let's Not Drink To This Series

Some decisions cost us more than we ever want to pay. This is true with Lot, but he was a slow learner. I can identify with him on that. I am a slow learner when it comes to some things. Perhaps we all are.

Sometimes I get a question: Is it a sin to drink in moderation? There are many sides to this issue, but maybe that is the wrong question.

Consider this from a recent study: Alcohol is involved in fifteen thousand homicides and suicides annually, twenty thousand accidental deaths, plus one-half of all auto accidents and the additional twenty-five thousand deaths they cause. Even 40 percent of the pedestrians who are killed have been drinking.

Tonight, we are going to look at an unintended consequence of one of Lot’s social behaviors.

Gen 19:30 “Now Lot went up out of Zoar and lived in the hills with his two daughters, for he was afraid to live in Zoar. So he lived in a cave with his two daughters.”

Lot had a head on collision with the God of Abraham. Let me tell you, you do not have a revelation about God in your life that it does not change you. Lot, in his life-habits, requested to live in Zoar instead of obeying and going to the hills. However, when he got to Zoar, he quickly decided, “This isn’t going to work.”

We know, looking to 2 Peter 2, that Lot grieved from the sin of Sodom when he lived there. Now, after this confrontation with God, he is no longer comfortable just sitting by amid evil. I believe this is why he left Zoar and went where God had told him. So Lot and his two daughters set up house in a cave in the hills, away from sin, he thinks.

Let me propose another reason they may have not stayed in Zoar. Zoar is 5 miles from the destruction of Sodom and the valleys. The citizens of Zoar must have seen it and fled their city in fear of being destroyed. It could have been that Lot and his daughters found the city vacant, or near vacant. What they may have found was only looters taking advantage of the mass exit of the citizens.

There is something that Lot has yet to learn about the gravity of sin and society. Sin affects those who you love most. I have mentioned this.

Gen 19:31-32 And the firstborn said to the younger, "Our father is old, and there is not a man on earth to come in to us after the manner of all the earth. 32 Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve offspring from our father."

First, realize that these daughters lived in a home without God-centered values. This is not a total excuse, but does come into play. Lot, as a father, had failed to supply his children with a spiritual upbringing. There girls did not have a concept of God, His purpose, provisions or His righteousness.

So the older one suggested they get Lot drunk and that they sleep with their father so they could have children. Children begin understanding the world by what they see and understand from the home. To them, the way it is at home is how the world must be. If they see their entire life blow up, then life must be that way everywhere. If they see mom and dad not getting along, then that is what family life must be for everyone. No wonder the suicide rate among teens is so high. What hope do they know? If mom and dad do not have a close walk with God, then God just must not walk close to mankind. This underlines the importance of marriages and homes built around truth.

Second I mentioned earlier the possibility of the citizens fleeing in fear, so the world-view of these girls may have gave them the impression that the entire world was destroyed. This may explain the oldest daughter’s statement, “…there is not a man left on earth…”

Here is the second message to parents and future parents. Where your children are raised, what they experience at school will shape their lives. We must stand guard to protect our children and build the defense of truth in them.

Third, our expectations on children shape their futures and decisions. These girls may have been motivated by the passion of the father to have grandchildren. The reasoning may have meant, “…so that our father will have offspring, or grandchildren.”

Sometimes, parents put unreasonable expectations on children. This is most harmfully true when the children do not have the same gifting as the parents. Yet the parents want to live their lives through their children. We have seen this in athletics through the years, but can happen in academics, dating, popularity, or any number of topics.