There are a lot of bad dads and moms in the Bible, but if Lot isn’t the worst one, then he is near the top of the list. Being a young girl in the ancient world was a very dangerous thing and sometimes the members of your own family could be your worst enemies. How far will Lot go to obey the hospitality codes of the ancient world? Who is he willing to sacrifice in order to look good? And what can we learn about the men of Sodom from the way they reacted to what Lot tried to do?
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Hi! I’m Miss Tyler! Welcome to this week’s episode of Context for Kids, where I teach you guys stuff most adults don’t even know. If this is your first time hearing or if you have missed anything, you can find all the episodes archived at contextforkids.podbean.com, which has them downloadable, or at contextforkids.com, where I have transcripts for readers or on my Context for Kids YouTube channel, where I usually post slightly longer versions. All Scripture this week comes from the MTV, the Miss Tyler Version, which is the CSB (Christian Standard Bible) tweaked a little or a lot to make the context and the content more understandable for kids.
All you grownups, this is a very harrowing chapter of the Bible so I strongly recommend that you listen to or read my adult teaching on Genesis 19 and all of the context so that if your kids have questions that I can’t answer here, you can be equipped and armed to do it yourself. I am very mindful about the age range of the audience here and so I have provided a supplemental context teaching on all of the difficult and controversial issues concerning Sodom over on Character in Context. I am interpreting the chapter in line with the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel, which is more appropriate for kids, and not according to more modern popular preaching.
I am calling this teaching, “Lot—the worst dad ever” but Lot isn’t the only terrible parent in the Bible. King David comes in a close second and as far as moms go, there was a Queen of Judah named Athaliah and she killed the whole royal family so that she could be queen after her son died. Fortunately, one of them escaped as a baby. There are a lot of parents in the Bible who made the mistake of playing favorites with kids and that never went well either, but what Lot did in trying to protect his guests was so shocking that it is really hard to read and sometimes it makes it look like God loves girls less than boys when really it was just Lot being Lot again! Today we’re reading Gen 19:4-9.
Before they (the angels in disguise) went to bed, the men of the city of Sodom, both young and old, every single one, surrounded Lot’s house. They called out to Lot and said, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Send them out to us so we can know them!” Lot went outside to them, just outside the entrance to his house, and shut the door behind him. He said, “Don’t do anything evil to my visitors, my brothers.Look, I’ve got two young daughters. I’ll bring them out to you, and you can do whatever you wantto them. However, don’t do anything to these men, because they are my guests and so I have to protect them.” “Get out of the way!” they said, adding, “This guy comes here as a foreigner, an alien, but now he’s acting like a judge! Now we’re going to hurt you way worse than we were going to hurt them.” They came closer and started to press so hard against Lot that they were going to break down the door.
Well, that couldn’t have possibly gone any worse. Lot evidently thought that these guys, the neighbors he chose, liked him a whole lot more than they actually do or that they at least might respect him, which they obviously don’t. So, we’re going to talk about the dangers of being friends with bad people but we are also going to talk about what a terrible father Lot is, and how badly girls were treated in the ancient world. This is going to be a depressing episode, but I want you to remember something whenever you are reading the Bible. The Bible tells the truth, and so that means it talks about what did happen which is usually not what should have happened. We already know that because Abraham has done some really awful stuff so far and he will again in the very next chapter. Just because Abraham is God’s choice to start a new family on earth doesn’t mean that Abraham is always good, smart, honest, or trusting in God’s promises. Neither is Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, or David. They are all going to do rotten things as well as good things. Only God is perfect and truly good, which is why Jesus is perfect and truly good. God is the only real hero of the Bible. But we’ve already had problems with Lot in the past—Lot isn’t wise or very generous. When he had the choice in Genesis 13 of what land he wanted and what land he was going to leave Abraham with—young Lot chose the land all up and down the Jordan River and left old Abraham with all the hills and rocks to climb. Not cool, Lot. And then, to make matters worse, he set up his tents outside Sodom, a wicked city with a wicked king. When he got kidnapped by the four kings and was rescued by his uncle, he still didn’t leave and now he’s gone and decided to live inside the city. Peter said that Lot was righteous because he was very upset about the behavior of the people of Sodom, but not upset enough to leave! It was good of Lot to take the two strangers/angels in for the night but pretty much everything else he does is one terrible mistake after another. We aren’t supposed to like Lot very much—except compared to the men who lived in Sodom. So, not much. Really, apart from taking these angels in, we haven’t seen one positive thing about him. The one common denominator—meaning the one thing everything involving Lot has in common—is a whole bunch of trouble and usually related to his really bad decisions. And he never seems to learn from his mistakes. He sure makes some doozies.
Like we talked about last time—to invite people into your home and promise them safety—means that you not only have to live in a place, but you also have to be accepted and trusted as someone who has the right to invite in strangers. The men of Sodom don’t seem to feel that way about Lot. Remember that guests couldn’t be asked what they were doing, where they were going, or even who they were! Lot was acting like one of them, but they didn’t see things that way. As far as they were concerned, Lot didn’t have the right to offer anyone protection. So, they don’t think anything about surrounding his house or demanding he send his guests outside to do goodness only knows whatever they want to do. They probably figure that Lot needs to be put in his place and shown that they have the right to do whatever they want to visitors and that there is absolutely nothing he can do to stop them because this is their city and not his. And this is where the story gets the absolute worst. This is one of the most awful things you will ever see someone do in the Bible and there are a lot of terrible things. Lot goes outside to talk with his “neighbors” and tells them that he has invited the strangers in and promised them protection, so he can’t go back on that without looking weak and shamed in front of his guests and his family. No man in the ancient world wanted that to happen. A person’s honor was the only protection they had against their neighbors. If they could take Lot’s guests away, then they could come back and do whatever they wanted to everyone in his family and him too. A smart man would have left this place a long time ago. But what is Lot’s decision? Who will he protect? Who is he willing to throw to these wicked men?
Well, Lot decides to protect himself and his own reputation with the men of the city. He offered to let them hurt his young daughters instead and we know they are young because they aren’t married yet—even though they are betrothed to some men in the city, which means they are engaged to be married to men they might not even know. Men who might actually be outside Lot’s home right now as part of the angry mob. Of course, if these men know that the girls are engaged to men of their city, that would make them furious because even in Sodom, you weren’t allowed to hurt the wife or fiancé of another man. It was one of the worst crimes you could commit. In the eyes of everyone there, those girls already belonged to the two men they were engaged to. If they hurt those girls, they would be sinning against the men they were going to marry and if they did that, no one’s wives, fiancés, or daughters in the city would be safe. They would be starting wars between families and that was serious business in those days. Everyone would have to take sides and things would get really violent and really crazy really quick. Maybe Lot did that on purpose, hoping that maybe someone would grab one of the girls and it would start a huge fight but as a parent, let me tell you that most grownups would rather die than do something like that to put their child in danger! But as far as Lot was concerned, it was less of a sin to hurt his daughters than his guests—as crazy as that seems to us. Lot was concerned about his reputation and so he was following the cultural rules of the ancient Near East (which is all the land from Egypt to Babylon) that told him that strangers were more important than daughters. It was a terrible time for women and girls to be alive, let me tell you. Like I say all the time, this was the world that God wanted to change. This story tells us what happens when a whole city not only doesn’t know our God but also doesn’t seem to care about anything right, good, or decent. How could Lot stand living there?
Well, sometimes we get comfortable being around bad things as long as they aren’t happening to us. Imagine being friends with a bully but the bully is really nice to you, and so it only bothers you a little bit when your friend is being mean to littler kids or the unpopular kids. Plus, you know that having a bully for a friend means that no one wants to mess with you and even more than that, you know your bully friend thinks that being mean is an okay thing and the people they are mean to just deserve it. What will that friend do to you if you tell them they aren’t the great person they think they are? Well, they aren’t going to be your friend anymore. When Lot told the strangers not to sleep out in the city square, he was telling his neighbors that he knew they couldn’t be trusted—and even though they couldn’t be trusted, no one wants to hear that they aren’t just totally awesome people who are just doing what needs to be done. You know, there aren’t many bad people in the world who really think they are wrong. Everyone has a reason for what they are doing, and they think their reasons are good ones even when they aren’t. That’s why we all have to be careful because when we think we are right is when we can be the most wrong.
Do you think that High Priest Caiaphas and his buddies believed they were evil for what they did to Jesus? Not a chance, they even said it was a good thing for Jesus to die because if they didn’t get Him killed, then there would be trouble with the Romans. Do you think that the people who were trying to trick and trap Him with clever arguments or trying to get Him to make powerful people angry enough to kill Him thought that they were the bad guys in the story? No way, they just saw that everyone was starting to follow Jesus instead of listening to them and they wanted to stop Him. They believed that listening to them was the same thing as listening to God! How about the Roman soldiers who beat Him up, whipped Him, made fun of Him, pressed thorns into his head and crucified Him? They were having a great time—they hated being stationed in hot, miserable Judea where the people didn’t act like normal Romans and a lot of those soldiers were Samaritans who hated the Jews for tearing down their Temple on Mt Gerizim a hundred and fifty years earlier. They believed that the strong should hurt the weak to keep them in line and scared and obedient. Romans generally didn’t see non-Romans as even being totally human or deserving of being treated well. So, despite how awful it is to read about what happened to Jesus, the only person involved who ever seems to feel bad about being a part of it was Judas, who sided with the bullies to get Jesus arrested in the first place and he did it for money. He sold Jesus because he thought he had good reasons. But when Judas saw what happened, he felt so bad that he killed himself. Everyone else felt they had done the right thing. But they were all acting like bullies just thinking about themselves and what they thought was best for them. Bullies never go around thinking they are wrong to do what they were doing. And the men of Sodom all believed they were right as well. We can all be very wrong while believing we are very right.
But everyone has at least some standards and when Lot offers the men of Sodom his young daughters who were engaged to two of their own people, they got so furious that they told Lot exactly what they thought about him. I wonder if he was surprised. I wonder if he thought they were his friends just because they had never hurt him and let him live there. I wonder if maybe he thought he was a good example for them and maybe they would see that he wasn’t as horrible as they were and would reconsider their life choices. A lot of people who are friends with really mean people believe that about themselves but it almost never turns out to be true. When a nice person hangs out with a bully, the nice person usually gets meaner, and the bully rarely gets nicer. Why should they be nicer? Since they have a “nice” friend, they probably think that makes them a good person. Especially if that “nice” person just lets them get away with whatever they want to do to whomever they want. Like Lot, “nice” people who are friends with bullies are often really surprised when the bully gets tired of them and treats them just as badly as they treat everyone else. It is very foolish to think that we are too special and wonderful for a bully to do the same things to us that they do to everyone else. Most people have to learn that the hard way. I learned it in church when I was friends with a pastor who was a terrible bully. Well, I guess I was his friend, but he was never mine because as soon as he got angry with me he made me sorry I had ever even met him. Anyone can be a bully—kids, adults, parents, teachers, and even pastors. Bullies can’t be trusted—not by anyone. Lot made a big mistake in thinking they wouldn’t hurt him or anyone in his house. Maybe he was their friend, but they weren’t his friends. They were just buddies—people who are okay with each other until something happens to make one of them angry.
After Lot told them to hurt his young daughters instead, somebody yelled, “Get out of the way!” and then they started talking to each other, probably saying things like, “This guy came here from the outside—he isn’t even one of us and look at him telling us what we can and can’t do! He thinks we don’t have the right to know who these guys are and what they are doing and he says we shouldn’t hurt them. Who does he think he is to tell us what we can and can’t do? What we should and shouldn’t do? What’s right and wrong? He thinks he is our judge, better than our own elders who have lived here all their lives and who made us a rich city! How can he believe he has the right to come in here as a stranger from who the heck knows where and tell us what to do? He has no family here to protect him! Let’s show him exactly who he is—a nobody! We’ll do worse to him and to his whole household and these strangers and then he’ll know who the boss is. We don’t need his permission to take his daughters or his guests.”
Can you even imagine how scary that would have been for Lot and his family? These men were forcing their way to the door with Lot standing in the way, and Lot didn’t have any friends in the crowd who were going to protect him. Lot and his family were doomed! Abraham saved him the last time he was in trouble but this time he was totally on his own. But we know something that Lot doesn’t know—the two men in his house aren’t really men. They are actually angels who were sent to Sodom by God to figure out if all the bad stories He was hearing about the evil and wicked men of Sodom were really true. At this point in the story, it is safe to say that they have seen enough to know that all those people who were crying out were telling the truth. What we don’t know at this point in the story is what the angels are going to do about it. We will get to that next week. It’s a very exciting story but it is also just another chance for Lot to make some really bad decisions and to find out that nobody takes him seriously.
There are a lot of examples in the Bible about people getting messed up with the wrong kinds of friends and ending up in big trouble. King Solomon’s son Rehoboam, after Solomon died and he became king, had a choice between listening to people who were suffering when his dad was king and some wise mentors or to his buddies. He made the wrong choice. Solomon started out as a great king who made good choices but after a while, he wanted to build more and more stuff and palaces and temples for his hundreds of wives, so he took a ton of money from the countries around him and even forced his own people (God’s people!) to work as slaves doing all the building. And he taxed his own people too, so much that when his son Rehoboam became king, they begged him to have mercy on them. They said that if he was kind to them that they would be loyal to him. Rehoboam asked his older advisors what he should do and they told Rehoboam to listen to the people and to cut their taxes and stop using them as slaves so that they would follow him as king. But then Rehoboam listened to some people his own age who told him to be even meaner to the people than his dad was. If Rehoboam had listened to the wiser, older advisors, then he could have been a great king. But he listened to his buddies instead and told the people that he was going to whip them with scorpions and demand even more of them than his father had. Well, that was a big mistake because Israel was made up of twelve territories and ten of them up and abandoned Rehoboam. They made a new kingdom for themselves under a man named Jeroboam and the kingdom was never whole ever again. All because Rehoboam decided to be a bully and he had buddies who were telling him that was the right thing to do.
A lot of people in the Bible had friends who shouldn’t be listened to, but maybe the most surprising was a man named Job, whom God said was the best guy in the world. Job was rich and powerful and loved God and had many friends, but as soon as everything started going wrong for Job—his kids died, all his sheep and goats and cows died, and he lost everything except his wife—well, those friends started giving him some really bad advice and were acting like bullies. Bullies don’t just beat people up. Most bullies use their words more often than they use their fists. Instead of being kind to Job, they started telling him that everything that had happened was entirely his own fault and they started making up nasty stories about evil things Job must have done to deserve it! And they just wouldn’t stop no matter what until God yelled at them. Job kept saying, “Guys, I haven’t done anything wrong! I haven’t done any of these terrible things you are accusing me of!” But every time Job told the truth, his buddies just got meaner and meaner. Not only were they accusing him of hurting people who couldn’t protect themselves, but now they were calling him a liar and prideful and mocking him—which means they were making fun of him. As if Job’s life wasn’t bad enough, with his children all dead and all his stuff gone, and covered from head to toe in painful open sores—now the people he thought were wise and believed were his friends were making fun of him and worse. And they all thought they were the good guys because they believed with all their hearts that Job needed to be told to get right with God or else things would get even worse than they already were. Sometimes, we can be so convinced that we are right that we think everything we do is totally justified and okay. But they were all wrong and God told them so.
You know, we can even look at Jesus’s disciples and his own brothers. Of course, Jesus knew about his disciples and knew they weren’t perfect and he wasn’t ever going to take their advice on anything because they gave super terrible advice. They told him they wanted to call down fire from Heaven on the Samaritans just because they disagreed with Jesus about where the Passover should be celebrated. Peter told Jesus not to go to Jerusalem for Passover if the chief priests, scribes, and elders were going to have Him killed. One of them chopped off the ear of one of the servants of the High Priest and Jesus told him to put away his knife, which was probably the one he carried to slaughter the Passover lamb the day before. The disciples weren’t really known for being the best judges about what was right and what was wrong—they were just normal people like us.
I love you. I am praying for you. I want you to always be very mindful, to think very carefully, about who you think your friends are. Are they really your friends or are they just your buddies until they get mad at you? Are they kind people or would you be scared to talk to them about the things they are doing? How do your friends treat other people? Do they get you into trouble or are they good influences? It can feel good to have bullies on our side but the truth is that bullies aren’t really on anyone’s side except for their own. Lot found that out the hard way.