Yes, Even You, Even That
Read Time: 13 mins
Later the older daughter said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is no man anywhere nearby to have sexual relations with us, according to the way of all the world. Come, let’s make our father drunk with wine so we can have sexual relations with him and preserve our family line through our father.” So that night they made their father drunk with wine, and the older daughter came and had sexual relations with her father. But he was not aware that she had sexual relations with him and then got up. So in the morning the older daughter said to the younger, “Since I had sexual relations with my father last night, let’s make him drunk again tonight. Then you go and have sexual relations with him so we can preserve our family line through our father.” So they made their father drunk that night as well, and the younger one came and had sexual relations with him. But he was not aware that she had sexual relations with him and then got up. In this way both of Lot’s daughters became pregnant by their father. The older daughter gave birth to a son and named him Moab. He is the ancestor of the Moabites of today. The younger daughter also gave birth to a son and named him Ben-Ammi. He is the ancestor of the Ammonites of today.
Genesis 19:31-38 NET
Yes, you read that right. Two sisters take turns drugging and rapping their father to become pregnant by him. Yes, that is in the Bible. Why did I feel the need to write about them? Because their story can give us a sense of hope.
The story starts with God saying that He’s heard so much crying from Sodom that He has to go down and check for Himself to see if it’s as bad as the outcry suggests. God doesn’t want it to be true that the city is this bad. So as a conscientious judge, He seeks to investigate for Himself before He punishes. Isn’t that good news? God isn’t walking around looking for people to punish. He would love to offer grace and give those in the wrong a chance to repent and choose safety with Him, but at the same time, He must uphold justice and both protect and avenge those who are being hurt by sin.
So God checks, but it’s just as bad as He feared. So bad that there aren’t even 10 righteous people throughout the whole city. Ezekiel 16 says that they were arrogant. This foundational sin is the core from which both the devil and Eve saw their falls. It's a distrust in God that leads to an over reliance in self. It’s the belief that your understanding, expectations, and comforts are the rule of law. Just like Babylon, Sodom experienced a dangerous arrogance. The Bible says that they enjoyed carefree ease and abundance while ignoring the poor. And it says they exercised abominable deeds deliberately. They were so bad that when visitors came, not some but all of the men from every part of the city surrounded the house they were staying in and tried to break in so that they could gang rape them. Lot thinks it’s a good idea to offer his virgin daughters to the mob so that they can be abused instead, which is insane in itself, but the mob turns down the offer and decides that they’d also like to kill Lot. It's insane. This city is just full of unprovoked violence and predatory behavior. It’s crazy, and God has to put a stop to this in the same way you’d want your abuser to be stopped.
But the issue comes when God's children are the same ones perpetuating sin. God wants to cleanse the world of the sin that is harming the people He loves. He wants to eradicate abuse, arrogance, rape, and racism. He wants to put a stop to pride and predatory policies because they’re persecuting His people. Sin is killing us, and God wants to save us, so Jesus acts as an intercessor to cover us so that we don’t get caught up in the extermination process. This is what we see Abraham doing for Lot. He acts as a mediator and covers Lot so that Lot doesn’t deal with the full consequences of playing a part in perpetuating the sin that has caused so much pain in Sodom. While we deserve to be punished like the rest of the abusers, Jesus has the grace to get us out of the destruction-destined city if we’d just follow Him.
So the angels that visited Lot blinded the men who sought to harm them and rushed Lot and his family out of the city as God allowed the city to face the consequences of its actions. Lot tries to warn both of his future son-in-laws but they take offense to the warning and decide to stay in the condemned city. Even as you invite others to experience the safety of salvation, they’ll still choose their sin over their Savior.
So Lot, his wife, his daughters, and the angels then begin to make their way out of the imploding city, even with some heavy urging from the angels after some hesitation from Lot, but Lot's wife looks back at the city longingly and seals her own fate. Now the city is gone. The men the daughters thought they would marry are gone. Their mother is gone, and everything the girls have grown to know and love is destroyed. While the city was exceedingly wicked, even abuse victims deal with feelings of grief when their abuser dies. Imagine the feelings of loss as in an instant they lose their mother, friends, home, and future husbands. They seemingly lose everything they dreamed of and imagined for. They lose everything they’ve known. This is a hard moment for Lot and his daughters.
It's from this city that Lot's family is coming from. This is their background. This is the city in which his daughters were raised. This is the city that the girl's future husbands and mother chose over safety. And it’s this city that they go through the emotional roller of seeing being destroyed. This is the world they come from, but this is also the world they desire to be like.
And this is where we find ourselves in the story. They’re questionable women, from a questionable city, who had questionable parents and were on the path to get married to questionable men, and they are now plotting to do questionable things to their own father. They’re a product of their environment and trauma. And even after experiencing a miraculous escape from their perverted past, they seem to be stuck in a cycle of sin, as we see them deciding to perpetuate the cycle of sexual abuse. Can you identify? Even after seeing the destruction sin results in and being offered an escape, you can’t seem to break free from all of the symptoms of the sickness you’ve been given the solution for. They escape the city and say to themselves that they want to be like the rest of the world and have children.
Now, they had just escaped the destruction of the city. Maybe they're looking for some sense of normalcy, companionship, or intimacy to get their mind off things. Maybe they were afraid they’d have no protection if their father died. But even if they had sons who could protect them, it would be well over a decade before those sons could physically defend them. Why couldn’t they just chill out and be patient? Who’s to say there weren’t other better men from a different city that God could introduce them to later? Their thought process is so left field, but isn’t this how we act and view things when all we know and see around us is sin?
The older daughter gets what she thinks is an ingenious idea to take matters into her own hands, as Abram did with Hagar. She goes to her younger sister and proposes her plan. The plan is to get their dad, Lot, blacked out drunk so that they can overpower him, rape him, and hopefully get pregnant. They don’t just dream up this crazy plan; they execute it. They try to end up getting away with it without Lot knowing. This would be bad on its own, but it’s not just a one-time thing. The next night, it’s the younger daughter's turn, and she does the same thing. Lot doesn’t know what happened, and they end up pregnant. In this, these women are simply proving that they’re just as bad as the city they left. They’ve been offered salvation, but they’re still acting like sinners. Can you identify?
While this story is insane, I believe it can show us some of the grace of God in our own lives. Why? Because God can still take any situation, even those as bad as this, and turn it around for something good. I don’t care what you were born into. I don’t care what mistakes you’ve made. I don’t care what destructive decisions you’ve planned, executed, and then did again. God is offering you His power not only to heal you but to use you to heal others. He’s still offering an opportunity for redemption. Jesus is pulling out all the stops to give you as many chances as possible to choose Him and find safety. He’s using everything the devil meant for evil and trying to redirect it into something He can use to prosper you.
God Wants to Use it All, Even That Part
Do you remember Joseph’s famous quote? “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for the good of many.” We often think this concept is about God weaving together the things that others have done to us for our good, and that is also true. But I want you to remember the real context. It’s even bigger than that. This passage isn’t just about the good of Joseph. It’s about God having the power to use even someone’s own sin to lead to their salvation. Don’t miss this because it shows how grand His grace really is.
Joseph, at the moment of this quote, was talking to the very brothers who sold him into slavery. He is now feeding them after every nation other than Egypt, including their own, needed food. So peep what God did here. The brothers saw a pit, but God saw provision. They saw a nagging brother, but God worked it out for the blessing of nations. Joseph is saying that their evil past was recycled so that they could eat in the present. They left him for dead in their minds, but God used it as a setup for not just Joseph’s good, but their good, too.
God used their abuse to arrange their future abundance. Their mistake arranged for their miracle. Are you catching this? God is big enough to use the moments you turn away from Him to help you be drawn closer to Him. Isn’t that good news? Isn't that proof of His grace? Isn't that proof of how bad He wants you? He doesn’t want anything to get in the way of you choosing Him, so He will even use your mistakes to give you another opportunity. You aren’t as powerful as you think. Your mistakes don’t stop the Messiah from accomplishing what He wants to. Faith is believing that God is strong enough to factor my foolishness into His plan.
Still don’t believe me? Think your sin stinks too much for salvation? Think your mistake was too much for the Messiah to work out for your good? Do you need another example?
This isn’t an isolated concept. God doesn’t just fix what’s done to you; He has a way of even finding use for the evil you choose to do. Judah, the one the tribe is named after, slept with his daughter in law who he thought was a prostitute, and gave birth to Perez, who was an ancestor of Rahab. God still used Judah, and He even got something out of the mistake. Rahab was a prostitute, but she was still used by God to hide spies and help them make it into the promised land. But that’s not it. God used this prostitute for more. Rahab’s son was Boaz, who later rescued and married a Moabite named Ruth. Ruth was from the wrong family and wrong city, but Ruth became the great-grandmother of King David, and her story is used to show us how Jesus claims us and when we need it most. Something good, right? David abandons his country and countrymen by not leading them into war as a king should, coerces Bathsheba to sleep with him, and after she gets pregnant, he tries to lie to cover it up. When that doesn’t work, David devises a plan to kill her husband, who’s been nothing but kind to him. It’s insane. God really should start over. He should forget David and his line. But it’s through David and Bathsheba’s son, Solomon, and this line, that the temple would be built and Jesus would be born. God used David’s sin as a setup for the Savior who would save Him from sin. God got something good out of a bad situation. Solomon gives birth to Rehoboam, a king who did evil in the sight of the Lord through the marriage to one of his forbidden foreign wives, Naamah, an Ammonite. One of King Rehoboam's descendants was King Manassah who promoted false worship, killed prophets, and even sacrificed his own kids. I could keep going for a long time with this pattern. Everyone seemingly imagines more evil to involve themselves with. But if you follow the pattern, you’ll notice that God was playing a bigger game than we may notice. You may have realized that I’m simply outlining the lineage of Jesus. God used the people who needed saving the most to prepare the way for the Savior. And He often used their mistakes to make way for their miracle. He can use you, too.
He Chooses Broken People on Purpose
Jesus could’ve used anyone. He could’ve arranged it so that He’d be born into a spotless family with no drama or secrets. He could have set it up so that He’d be born amongst the best of the best. But the thing we see here is that Jesus has a type, and that type is broken. The Bible says that Jesus purposely chooses the weak among us to prove His strength. It's like when He made Gideon's army smaller so they’d never think they did it on their own. He wants to protect us from our own pride. He’s like the super athlete in school who would draft all the slow and uncoordinated kids to his team and still win just to prove both how good He really was and remind us how much we need Him. A rocky resume is a runway for Jesus to show up.
You’ll notice that both of the children from Lot and his daughters are mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus. Israel threw away the Moabites and Ammonites. They were outsiders. They were the cousins no one talked about. They were a symbol of sin and shame. But Jesus chose them, and He chooses you, too. While you were still planning, perusing, performing, and pushing your sin, He chose you. Isn't that good news? Isn't that grace?
The Bible seems to be a book of extremes to let you know both that you’re never too far away to be encompassed in the plan of God. Regardless of where you fall, Jesus’ track record is proof that He isn’t afraid of broken people. In a world where people threw those with leprosy into isolated camps and forced anyone who touched what they touched to be isolated like they were, Jesus hugged them. He isn't afraid of what makes others avoid you.
You Aren’t too Broken to be a Blessing
I remember talking to a friend who couldn’t conceive or understand why or how God could use or want to use him. He not only thought he’d made too many mistakes, but he thought that he’d mess up whatever God tried to do for him. Many of you likely feel like this. You see your brokennesses and your decision patterns, your fears and your doubts, and question why God would waste time with you. Maybe you understand God loving broken people like you, but it's hard for you to believe He’d use you. You are fully aware of your tattered past and traumatized present. So you start to believe that your weaknesses are big enough to overcome God's strength.
The first time we see God mad at Moses isn’t because he was too weak but because he believed his weakness could trump God's strength–another form of arrogance and self-reliance. Many of us believe the same thing. We don’t just think our mistakes disqualify us; we fully believe we’d fumble any blessing God does try to throw our way. But that posture screams of unbelief. Its beloiving in your negative more than God’s possible. It's reading too much of your own press and not enough of God’s. It’s arguing that you can pick better than God. It’s you literally saying that you and your bad are stronger than God and His good. Do you see how arrogant and stupid that is? Your little no good self? Stronger than God?! Ha! It's just as arrogant as Sodom to believe your weakness is more than God’s strength.
If God can use incessual, child sacrificing, false God worship promoting, blatantly disobedient, blatantly disrespectful, sexually deviant, murderous, lying, abusive, unfaithful, arrogant, hateful, doubtful, impatient, mean, jealous, self serving, rude, easily angered, racist, sexist, addicted, ugly, dirty, stupid, smelly, rapists to help others experience Him, I know He can use you.
You may start to think that you’re too far from home to be healed, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. The reason Jesus hasn’t come back yet is that He’s still using people like you to help people like you find safety in Him. The Bible says He doesn’t want anyone to perish. While one day, God will have to come to destroy this sin-sick world and the sinners in it to bring justice to His hurting children, He wants to cover us so that we don’t experience the consequences we deserve. While you were yet in the sin that deserved destruction, God made a choice to be your sacrifice. And now, as you’re still not perfect, He’s asking you to ask other imperfect people to get in on the deal you got in on. You deserve to be wiped out in the flood, but He’s building an ark of safety and inviting the world inside. That ark is our mediator, Jesus.
Faith in Jesus is the covering to protect you from the destruction you deserve. Isn’t that good news? Isn’t that grace? We have a gift and not just an opportunity to accept it, but a call to invite others to partake.
Yes, you’re broken and burdened. You’re a highly experienced sinner and a recipient of salvation, but who else is better to tell the story of His grace than a billboard of it?
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