Lot is super irritating and what he does this week proves that just being unhappy with how people are acting isn’t enough to make a difference in a wicked place. No one respects Lot or takes him seriously—not even his future sons-in-law. Lot still isn’t willing to leave Sodom, even when his neighbors want him dead but God keeps forgiving Lot and giving him chances to do what is right. We’ll also be talking this week about what forgiveness is and isn’t.
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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.
Last week, we left Lot in the middle of a big mess. Lot refused to turn his houseguests over to the angry mob surrounding his house, and now they want to hurt them all. So much for all these guys he thought were his neighbors!
The men of Sodom pushed Lot and came up so they could break down the door. But the angels reached out, brought Lot back into the house with them, and shut the door. They blinded the men who were at the entrance of the house, both young and old, with a bright light so that they couldn’t find the door.Then the angels said to Lot, “Do you have any other family members here: a son-in-law, sons and daughters, or anyone else in the city who belongs to you? Get them out of here, because we are going to destroy this city and all the cities nearby because the outcry against these people is so loud before the Lord, that the Lord has sent us to destroy it.”So, Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, the men of Sodom who were going to marry his daughters. “Get up,” he said. “Get out of this place–the Lord is going to destroy the city!” But his sons-in-law thought he was just joking.When the sun finally came up, the angels tried as hard as they could to make Lot want to leave: “Get up! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be killed when this city gets punished.” But Lot kept stalling. Because the Lord had mercy on Lot, the angels grabbed his hand, his wife’s hand, and the hands of his two daughters. The angels brought them out and left them outside the city.As soon as the angels got them outside, one of themsaid, “Run for your lives! Don’t look back and don’t stop anywhere on the plain! Run to the mountains, or you will die!” (Gen 19:9-17)
Yikes! Just as the men of Sodom were trying to break into Lot’s house, the angels that Lot was protecting somehow reach out, pull Lot inside, and shut the door before any of the men could get in. That’s some trick, considering they were pushing against Lot to try to get inside. The truth is that we don’t know everything about angels and what they can and can’t do. We know they are a lot smarter than we are and that even though they can live forever, they can also die. They were created by God, just like us, and are superior to us—just like we are superior to animals. Angels are God’s servants, they were created specifically to serve God just like humans were specifically created to rule over the earth like God would. Angels are like us in that they have free will and they can choose to disobey God, but these angels are very concerned about obeying. And what God wants is for this wicked city to be wiped off the face of the earth. Can you blame Him? This is a really dangerous place. We have to wonder why Lot likes living there—is it because they are rich in Sodom with all the asphalt mining? Are they good to him and do they buy his critters to eat? We don’t know why Lot decided to move near Sodom in the first place and we really don’t know for sure why he ever ended up inside the city in a house. We do know one thing for sure, both were really bad decisions.
When the angels blinded the men of Sodom, I don’t want you to think about them all literally being blind. When we read what it says in Hebrew and along with the rest of the Bible and especially with the Apostle Paul, what they probably did was create such a bright light that it made it impossible for them to see where the door was and so they had to go back home. Otherwise, I think what Lot told the men who were going to marry his daughters later in the story would have actually scared them enough to listen instead of ignoring him. If I was blinded all of a sudden, I wouldn’t be joking about anything! Did Lot know that they were angels yet? I am not sure because he wasn’t acting like he was scared of them or anything. In fact, he isn’t even being very cooperative with them. They warned him to go to everyone in the city who was part of his family—if there was anyone outside of his own house that he was related to—and tell them that God is about to destroy the city of Sodom and the angels will be doing it right away. So, Moses tells this story about Lot going to the men who were going to marry the two daughters that he was going to give over to the crowd—and maybe they were even there when he said it. If they were part of the angry crowd, I am thinking that they probably aren’t very happy with him right about now. What we see is that there is no one else whom Lot goes to warn and so he has no other daughters or sons in the city. That makes these two men very important to him, but why?
If Lot doesn’t have any sons, it means that he has no one to inherit all his stuff or to take care of him and his wife when they are old. And I know we have talked about this so many times in the past so we are just going to review it. Do you remember all the things they would have to be scared of? Being robbed and beaten and left for dead when they got too old to defend themselves, not being buried and having their bodies eaten by animals and then pooped out and having people walk over them forever. Lot’s daughters couldn’t inherit his stuff and they were in danger if he died without them being married. And so, Lot probably had a deal with these men and their families for them to become his sons and inherit all his stuff when he died. In the ancient world, the oldest son got twice as much stuff as the others and so if they married Lot’s daughters, they would be a lot better off. They would get all his money and critters and everything. You know, it wasn’t until the time of Moses when it was decided that women who had no brothers could inherit from their father. That was very important. By the time of Jesus, women could inherit property from their fathers and husbands. That was important and it kept women a lot safer. But at the time Lot was alive, that just didn’t happen. Women had almost no power at all. That’s just one of the many reasons why God stepped in to change the world. If the world was the way He wanted it to be, He would have just left it alone! So, Lot needed to leave the city with his family but he also believed that he needed these men who were going to marry his daughters.
But it isn’t just the men surrounding Lot’s home who didn’t take him seriously or respect him—these men engaged to his daughters aren’t impressed with his warnings either. When he came to tell them that God was going to destroy the city, they think he is joking. In marrying his daughters, they will be his adopted sons and so they should be obeying him but they aren’t even listening to him. That’s a huge problem and just one more piece of proof that no one in town thinks anything good about Lot. And that’s a bad sort of person to have to be, when no one takes you seriously. But we talked about that last week. The angels told Lot that God was going to destroy the city because the people who lived there were terribly evil and wicked and that all the people they hurt were crying out about it to whatever gods would listen. Our God listens, even when the people who are crying don’t know Him or even know He exists. Do you know why?
God created humans to be His images in the world—to show the world what He is like by how we behave and how we rule over the land and the animals and plants and everything. If we are honoring God, then we are treating people fairly and everything He created with respect. What happens when we stop doing that? Well, the Apostle Paul once wrote a letter to the believers in Rome, teaching them more about Jesus. He sent it with a woman named Phoebe whom he trusted, and she read it to them and explained it. In that letter, he said that everything in the world is groaning because things are not the way they should be. In a way, he was saying that the whole world was crying out to God the same way that people were crying out about how cruel the people of Sodom were. Jesus came to fix that and to start reversing it. That’s what Paul was telling them. Jesus fixes the groaning one person at a time by changing them into the kinds of people who are loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, gentle, trustworthy and able to control themselves. Do you see how when a person changes from cruel to all those good things how it makes it better not only for everyone around them but for the animals and planet too? The planet and the people in it get happier and cry out less the more of us really follow Jesus and become more and more like Him. That’s not hard to understand, right? Really being like Jesus means the people in our lives are a lot better off. And if we love people, that’s exactly what we will want more than anything. If we are selfish, we just won’t care what we do and how we treat people. The men of Sodom were all sorts of selfish and worse—they wanted what they wanted and wanted to do what they wanted to do and that was just that. If creation was looking at them to find out what God is like, they weren’t going to like what they saw and there would be absolutely no hope in the world for anything to get any better. So, God came to us as Jesus, so we could see that all the cruel and selfish people are definitely not what God looks like. Jesus is our King, the only person we should ever want to be completely like. And we can trust Him as our King because He is the perfect human and perfect God all at the same time.
The Bible tells us that there wasn’t anything good about Sodom, at all. That there wasn’t anything to be gained by not destroying it. That’s a scary thought. No matter how bad a place is, there are always good people there trying to make a difference. But not this place. I suppose God is telling us how important it is for good people to live in places that are terrible, but not just to live there like Lot was doing, but to be making a difference. Lot didn’t make any difference at all, and he was even willing to marry his young daughters to two of the wicked men of the city. Lot probably thought he was different because he didn’t like what they were doing but the problem was that he wasn’t doing anything more than just thinking. He knew it wasn’t safe for strangers to stay overnight in the city and the only way he could know that was if he knew about them hurting people in the past. Lot’s life was pretty sad because he doesn’t seem to ever make anything better, even when stuff bothers him. But God had mercy on Lot and his wife and daughters anyway. That tells us a whole lot about God and why we can trust Him.
When the sun finally came up the next morning, the angels really started pushing at Lot and trying to get him to leave. They told him that God would destroy the city whether he was in it or not. Lot had to make a choice—was he going to save his wife and daughters or was he going to stubbornly stick around? And why would he stay? The Bible doesn’t tell us but Lot just kept stalling and wouldn’t leave. Was he trying to take his stuff with him? Did he really think the city was safe as long as he stayed? We actually have no idea. Maybe you can think of some possible reasons and come up with a “what if” story. After warning him over and over again, the two angels grabbed Lot by the hand and his wife and two daughters too. Lot never left Sodom willingly, he had to be forced. Can you even imagine? His neighbors want to kill him and were only stopped through a miracle of being blinded with a bright light. The city is going to be destroyed. He literally has no reason to stay and every reason to leave but he just won’t go.
There was another time in the Bible when that same thing happened. Over a thousand years after Lot and Abraham died, the children of Israel had become so wicked that God even told them that they were worse than Sodom but He wasn’t going to destroy them because He loved Abraham so much and had made him a lot of promises. We’ve talked about those promises and the biggest promise of all was Jesus! Jesus wouldn’t happen if God treated His people the way He treated Sodom. And so He sent them to Babylon for seventy years for a time out but when that was over, they were supposed to come back home. But there was a big problem, because everyone left in Babylon was at home. They were all born there and they didn’t know much of anything about Israel except for what they had been told by their parents. And none of their parents had ever lived in Israel while it was still a good place to be. Jeremiah had warned them long before that God would tell them to “Come out of her,” (meaning leave Babylon) because God was going to punish them for their cruelty to His people during the war. God allowed Babylon to come in and win the fight against Israel because they needed to learn to obey God in the future but what Babylon did to them was way worse than anything God had in mind. God wanted them kicked out of the land but what the Babylonians did to them was so over the top evil that God had to do something about it. So, according to the prophet Isaiah, God raised up a king named Cyrus who really let the Babylonians have it and who also sent home to Israel any Jews who wanted to leave. When God told His people to finally leave Babylon and head back to the land of Israel, very few of them actually left. You see, it can sometimes feel very comfortable to stay in a bad place because going somewhere new can be really scary. Babylon was a very rich city, just like Sodom. And they mostly left the Jewish people alone and didn’t bother them after the war was over. The truth is that it seemed a lot safer to be in Babylon than it was to go back to Israel where all the cities had been destroyed and there was no temple and life was going to be very hard.
Some of them returned as soon as they could get a group together for traveling, because they knew that wherever God wanted them to be was the absolute best place they could be—no matter how difficult it might be. They also knew that when God said to leave a place that He had very good reasons for telling them that. Babylon was beautiful, comfortable, and easy but it was a nation built on slavery and violence and greed. They had power and so they used it to do and take whatever they wanted. That was good for them but for everyone else it was a total disaster. God wanted to take them away from that sort of life before they grew to like it and accept it as normal. And yes, there were idols too—a great many gods and goddesses—but every country had that in those days. So did Israel! That’s why God had the Babylonians destroy His Temple because they were worshiping other gods there and doing terrible things, and His Temple was too gross for Him to visit ever again. When God told them to go home and get it right this time, it meant that He wanted them to be nothing like Babylon. Just like He told Moses and the children of Israel not to be anything like Egypt! Same thing. God didn’t destroy Babylon but He did make it so they became servants to another empire entirely—the Persians and the Medes. If they had all returned when God told them to, the people who did go back wouldn’t have had so many troubles with the Samaritan leaders. Not only that, but Mordecai and Esther wouldn’t have been there either and Haman wouldn’t have tried to kill every Jew in the world. Trusting God when He tells us to go or to stay or to move may be scary but it’s always the safest thing to do.
But even though the angels are telling Lot that God wants him out of there and will destroy the city with or without him inside it, Lot and his family had to be pulled out by the angels. One of the angels, at this point, must have been really frustrated because they said, “Run for your lives! Don’t look back and don’t stop anywhere on the plain! Run to the mountains, or you will die!” Next time we will see Lot’s response and all we can do is facepalm. Do you know what facepalming it? It’s when you are so frustrated about something that you take your hand and you just lay your forehead on it so you can’t see anything. And you groan and shake your head in disbelief. That’s how we are supposed to feel about how Lot is acting. God keeps blessing him and having mercy on him and Lot is doing everything he possibly can to make God regret it. And you know what? God is like that even when we don’t want Him to be. He’s not only the God of second chances but third, fourth, and tenth chances. Jesus actually tells us that we have to give people four hundred and ninety chances—so many that we lose count. God keeps forgiving us like Jesus tells us to forgive the people who are being gooberheads. But as we will see with Lot, forgiveness doesn’t mean there aren’t going to be any consequences. When we do wrong things, something always changes and it may be big or it may be small but nothing stays entirely the same. Especially when we keep hurting people.
Since God keeps forgiving Lot for living near Sodom, and then moving inside Sodom, and then not being willing to leave—maybe today is a good time to talk about what forgiveness does and doesn’t mean. That’s especially important for you kids to understand because sometimes when people are trying to get away with stuff and don’t want any consequences, they will tell you that forgiveness means forgetting and pretending like nothing ever happened no matter how bad it was. I am going to tell you a story that I heard once that made me laugh even though it really isn’t funny:
Once upon a time, a man heard a knock at his door and opened it. His brother was outside and after they chatted for a bit, his brother up and punched him in the nose and just walked off. Well, the man was surprised because he hadn’t said anything mean and he didn’t even understand why his brother was angry enough to punch him. The next day, his broken nose bandaged, he heard a knock at the door and opened it. He was surprised to see his brother there again, and his brother looked very sorry and apologized for having hit him. The man hugged his brother and forgave him and after chatting a while, his brother up and punched him again with no warning and then walked away angrily. What on earth was that about? This time he only had a black eye because when his brother raised his fist, the man remembered what happened the day before and ducked out of the way so his nose didn’t get broken again. On the third day, the man heard a knock at the door and didn’t open it. He said, “Who’s there?” His brother cried and said he was sorry and asked the man to open the door to let him in. But the man was wiser than that and he replied, “I forgive you and I love you but I am not going to open the door and give you another chance to hit me!”
What does forgiveness look like in this story? Well, first of all, the man didn’t run after his brother and beat him up. That would be revenge and the biggest part of forgiveness is not getting even by doing worse to them than they did to us, or even doing the same thing. The second way the man showed his brother forgiveness was by talking with him and accepting his apology, but he didn’t forget what had happened so he was able to avoid getting his nose broken again and only ended up with a black eye. Remembering is important, because after all, if something wasn’t bad enough to remember then there wouldn’t be anything to forgive. The third forgiveness was still not running after him and beating him up the second time he came around. That would take a lot of love, forgiveness, and self-control and a person has to be really strong not to take revenge after getting punched two days in a row. The fourth forgiveness is being willing to talk to his brother from behind the door. A lot of people would just pretend like they weren’t home and wouldn’t ever talk to the brother again. He told him that he loves him and that he forgives him, meaning he won’t try to get even, but that he doesn’t trust his brother enough to open the door. And that’s not only wise but it is fair. Forgiveness doesn’t mean we let people go on punching us forever. Sometimes, forgiveness has to come with boundaries—new rules for having a relationship with someone. Some people are just too dangerous to be around and we have to keep our distance. Sometimes, people who just want to keep hurting other people without any consequences will call that being unforgiving but that isn’t true. Everything we do, good or bad, has consequences and can bring people closer to us in trust and love or farther away from us when we can’t trust them or they can’t trust us. Lot needed to create some serious boundaries between himself and Sodom, for sure but for whatever reason, he just didn’t want to!
I love you. I am praying for you. Genesis 19 gives us a whole lot of stuff to think about. Lot was not a wise man but we can become wiser when we see his mistakes and try not to make ones just like it.