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On this episode of Wifey Wednesdays, Emily looks at the disturbing account of Lot’s daughters and what we can learn about what fear does to us. This episode has many horrific details and yet, there is such a beautiful redemptive picture given in scripture. This episode highlights God’s faithfulness to redeem even in the midst of our most chaotic mess-making.
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What is Wifey Wednesdays?
Wifey Wednesdays: A show for women that focuses on the Titus 2 principle: learning to love our husband and our children, and being the keepers at home that God intends for us to be. Wifey Wednesdays, hosted by Emily Hatfield, is released every Wednesday.
Hello and welcome to wifey Wednesdays, a podcast for women who are seeking to be the best wives they can be. I’m your host, Emily Hatfield, and this is the show where the plan is always to do things God’s way, especially our marriages.
Today we two sisters — known famously to us as Lot’s daughters.
Whew, their life story is mildly like watching a train wreck. First, we have the introduction to their story, which shows all the men of Sodom coming to their father’s home and threatening to beat the door down because they want to have inappropriate relations with Lot’s angel guests. In this instance, their father says to the lustful men outside — “Behold, I have two daughters who have not known any man. Let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please.” Well yikes. Yikes yikes yikes.
I really hope that Lot’s daughters weren’t listening at this moment. I’m hoping the commotion was loud and they were in a back room being protected. Because how old could they have been, really? They were bethrothed, but not married yet. So that leads me to believe they are relatively young. Clearly having already started menstruating, but still not at the point of being married off for whatever reason.
So, the whole Sodom and Gomorrah thing unfolds, and it’s awful, and they’re on the run, and their mom turns into salt — what a SCENE, am I right??? And Lot goes into this area of Zoar into the hills and is living in a cave.
It seems that from this vantage point, and their limited knowledge of what is happening, they really believe the world is ending. They believe there is not another man on earth who is going to be able to help them repopulate the earth and so they not only THINK the unthinkable but they DO the unthinkable, and both of these girls get their father drunk and sleep with him in his drunken stupor. In an unsurprising turn of events, these two girls give birth to two nations who are going to be unthinkably evil — the Moabites and the Ammonites.
This story is so gross. It is so sad. But it also shows the power of fear. When you feel hopeless, when you feel afraid, you are often going to do things that are unthinkable. You are going to act out of that fear and do things that you might never have done otherwise. Fear keeps you from thinking clearly. Fear distracts your mind and sends you down a MUST PROTECT SELF path instead of down a MUST GLORIFY GOD path. They should have trusted that the same God who delivered them and their father out of Sodom would deliver them yet again. And maybe they didn’t have all the information. Or maybe they had seen how Lot acted out of fear and offered up his daughters as sexual sacrifices. Maybe acting out of fear was the norm. But it’s powerful, isnt it? Acting out of fear can be very powerful.
But not in a good way. Not in this instance. Sure, there is something to be said for the fight or flight response, ways that adrenaline can help us out of certain situations. But I am talking more about an unhealthy fear that doesn’t trust God. A fear that is too self-focused to be God focused, and therefore feels like we need to be in control instead of trusting God to handle it. Isn’t that what these daughters did? They felt that they needed to control the narrative — they needed to fix it. And all they did was make a big, disastrous mess of things. Their mental well being couldn’t have been in a good place after this. Could Lot’s have been? All of this seems remarkably awful.
AND YET — without the Moabites, we don’t have Ruth. Here is someone from a people with a shameful origin story, and yet she is redeemed and brought into the lineage of Jesus. Jesus isn’t afraid to have a great great however many greats grandmother who was a Moabite. Jesus can redeem anyone, at any time, from anywhere. He is the GREAT redeemer. And there is no one too messy or too depraved that His blood cannot cleanse. There is nothing too shameful for in your past that He cannot deliver you from. There is nothing so ugly that cannot be made beautiful through the redemptive work of Christ.
Obviously, this situation is an ugly one. There is so much sin and so much fear and so much power that Satan is wielding throughout the story. But there is even more power in the redemptive work of our Lord. There is more power in the blood of the Lamb. There is more power in the work of Jesus than in any earthly mess we can make. We may get things completely out of whack. We may do things the complete wrong way. But that doesn’t mean God is not able to receive glory from such an awful situation. Think about the David - Bathsheba - Uriah story. It’s awful. But God is able to be glorified in the penitent heart of David and in the beautiful way forgiveness shows up in the account. God is able to receive glory when Ruth is grafted into Israel even though she is a Moabite, a nation whose origin is questionable at best and completely awful and sinful at worst. But in Christ, we can all be redeemed. All of our ugly can be used for His glory. Please don’t ever think that something is so bad that it cannot be brought under Christ’s control. Please don’t ever think that something is so bad that you need to act sinfully out of fear in order to cover up or fix something else. Instead, let your life be brought under Christ’s redemptive control. Let Him make all things new. Let Him make everything better — even if that is only in eternity, though it often doesn’t wait until then.
I am grateful that not every account in scripture is a picture perfect one. I am grateful for the messes, because I am often a mess. And God is bigger than our messes, and always able to redeem — even when our fear has taken us to an awful, scary place. Thanks be to God for being such an amazing redeemer!
Well, that’s gonna do it for today’s episode of Wifey Wednesdays. I hope you’ll join us next time as we continue talking about powerful women throughout scripture. Until then, remember, love God love your husband.