When the Warning Becomes a Joke Text: Genesis 19:12-14
Introduction: The Laughter of Fools
We live in an age of jesters. Our civilization has become one vast, open-mic night where every sacred thing is held up for ridicule and every divine warning is treated as the punchline to a very long, very tired joke. The fear of God is not the beginning of wisdom for our generation; it is the beginning of a sneer. We have cultivated a sophisticated, urbane deafness to the thunder of God's law and the approaching footsteps of His judgment. We have mistaken God's patience for His absence, and His longsuffering for His non-existence.
But this is nothing new. The laughter of fools is an ancient soundtrack. It echoed in the days of Noah as he built an ark on dry land. It was heard in the courts of Israel as the prophets warned of Babylonian invaders. And as we see in our text today, it was the final sound heard in the streets of Sodom before the fire fell. The story of Lot and his sons-in-law is a sobering case study in what happens when the proclamation of God's impending judgment is met with the casual amusement of men who are far too comfortable in their sin.
Lot was a compromised man living in a condemned city. He was, as Peter tells us, a righteous man, vexed in his soul by the lawless deeds he saw day after day. Yet, he was also a man who had pitched his tent toward Sodom, then moved into Sodom, and then sat in the gate of Sodom, a place of civic influence. He had become entangled, and his entanglements had cost him his credibility. When the moment of ultimate crisis arrived, when the angels of God gave him a direct, merciful, and terrifying command to flee, his warning to his own family was dismissed as a joke. His words had no gravity because his life had no separation.
This passage is a stark warning to us. It is a warning about the danger of cultural compromise. It is a warning about the loss of patriarchal authority when that authority is not grounded in unambiguous holiness. And it is a warning about the spiritual state of those who can hear the most terrifying news in the universe, that God is about to act in judgment, and simply laugh it off. We must ask ourselves: when we speak of sin, righteousness, and judgment, do our lives lend weight to our words? Or do we, like Lot, appear to those closest to us to be jesting?
The Text
Then the two men said to Lot, "Whom else have you here? A son-in-law, and your sons, and your daughters, and everyone you have in the city, bring them out of the place; for we are about to destroy this place because their outcry has become great before Yahweh, so Yahweh has sent us to destroy it." And Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who were to marry his daughters, and said, "Get up, get out of this place, for Yahweh will destroy the city." But he appeared to his sons-in-law to be jesting.
(Genesis 19:12-14 LSB)
The Merciful Mandate (v. 12-13)
We begin with the urgent instructions of the angelic messengers.
"Then the two men said to Lot, 'Whom else have you here? A son-in-law, and your sons, and your daughters, and everyone you have in the city, bring them out of the place; for we are about to destroy this place because their outcry has become great before Yahweh, so Yahweh has sent us to destroy it.'" (Genesis 19:12-13)
The first thing to notice here is the grace of God. After the horrifying events at Lot's door, where the men of the city, young and old, revealed the depths of their depravity, judgment is now set. But even on the eve of destruction, God's mercy is extended to Lot's household. The angels ask, "Whom else have you here?" This is covenantal thinking. God deals with men as heads of households. The offer of salvation is extended not just to Lot, but to his entire sphere of influence: his sons, his daughters, and his sons-in-law.
This is a picture of the household principle we see throughout Scripture. When God saved Noah, He saved his whole family. When the Philippian jailer believed, he and his entire household were baptized. God's grace flows through covenantal lines, through the lines of headship and family. Lot is being given an opportunity to act as the patriarch, the spiritual head of his clan, and lead them out of destruction.
The reason for the judgment is stated plainly: "their outcry has become great before Yahweh." The sin of Sodom was not a quiet, private affair. It was loud. It was arrogant. It cried out. What was this sin? The prophet Ezekiel tells us plainly: "Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty and did an abomination before me" (Ezekiel 16:49-50). The abomination culminated in the aggressive, homosexual gang rape they attempted on the angelic visitors, but the foundation was pride, gluttony, and apathy. It was a society rotten from the inside out, and its stench had reached Heaven.
Notice the authority with which the angels speak. "We are about to destroy this place... Yahweh has sent us to destroy it." This is not a weather forecast. It is a divine decree. This is how God's judgment works. It is not an impersonal, cosmic accident. It is personal, purposeful, and executed by His holy messengers. The fire and brimstone are instruments in the hand of a sovereign God who is acting in righteous judgment against unrepentant sin. This is a terrifying reality, and it is precisely this reality that our modern world, and Lot's sons-in-law, cannot bring themselves to believe.
The Failed Warning (v. 14)
With this terrifying and gracious mandate, Lot goes to his sons-in-law. His mission is clear: preach the coming judgment and call for repentance, which in this case means immediate evacuation.
"And Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who were to marry his daughters, and said, 'Get up, get out of this place, for Yahweh will destroy the city.' But he appeared to his sons-in-law to be jesting." (Genesis 19:14)
Lot's message is admirably direct. "Get up, get out... for Yahweh will destroy the city." There is no ambiguity. He names the threat: Yahweh. He names the action: destruction. He names the required response: flee. On the surface, Lot does exactly what he was told to do. He delivers the warning. But the warning falls completely flat. Why?
The text tells us that "he appeared to his sons-in-law to be jesting." The Hebrew word here means to laugh, to mock, to make sport. They thought he was telling a joke. We must ask ourselves why his words carried so little weight. The answer is found in Lot's life. These sons-in-law were men of Sodom. They were marrying the daughters of a man who had, for all intents and purposes, become a man of Sodom himself. He lived there. He did business there. He sat in the gate there. He had raised his daughters there. His entire life was a testimony to the comforts and attractions of Sodom. He had accommodated himself to the culture to such a degree that when he finally spoke out against it, it was incongruous. It was unbelievable.
His sons-in-law had likely never heard him speak this way before. This talk of "Yahweh" and "destruction" was not the Lot they knew. The Lot they knew was the man who compromised, the man who got along, the man who feathered his nest in a wicked place. And so, when this compromised man delivered an uncompromising message, the message was filtered through their perception of the messenger. They didn't hear a prophet of God; they heard their father-in-law cracking a strange, late-night joke.
This is a permanent warning for the church. When we accommodate the spirit of the age, when we make our peace with the world's morality, when we love the things the world loves, we forfeit our prophetic voice. We cannot spend six days a week pitching our tents toward Sodom and then expect the world to take us seriously on Sunday morning when we talk about fire and brimstone. Our lives either amplify our message or they mock it. Lot's life had mocked his message in advance, and so his sons-in-law simply finished the job.
Their laughter was the laughter of men who are spiritually dead. They were so steeped in their sin, so comfortable in their rebellion, that the category of divine judgment had been erased from their minds. The idea that their behavior had consequences beyond the city limits was absurd to them. The notion of a holy God who judges sin was a punchline. This is the end-stage of a culture given over to depravity. First it tolerates sin, then it embraces sin, then it celebrates sin, and finally, it mocks the very idea of righteousness. They were beyond the reach of a warning, even a direct one from heaven, because the man delivering it had lived as one of them for too long.
Conclusion: No Laughing Matter
The story does not end well for the jesters. They laughed at the warning, and then they perished in the fire. Their laughter did not delay the judgment by a single second. All it did was condemn them. The sky did not care about their amusement. God's holiness is not subject to a popular vote. Judgment is not a joke.
We are living in a world full of Lot's sons-in-law. They are sophisticated, they are educated, and they are entirely convinced that the Christian message of sin and salvation is a joke. They mock our belief in a Creator, they ridicule our sexual ethics, and they laugh at the idea of a final judgment. And the great temptation for the church is to become like Lot, to so desperately want to be liked and accepted by this laughing world that we soften the message. We trim the hard edges. We stop talking about wrath and hell and judgment, and we speak only of a sentimental, grandfatherly God who would never do anything so unpleasant.
But in doing so, we lose our own souls and we guarantee the destruction of those we are trying to appease. A compromised messenger cannot deliver an uncompromised message. If our lives are not marked by a clear and joyful separation from the sins of our age, our words will be nothing more than a jest. Our warnings will be toothless.
The call for us is clear. First, we must examine our own lives. Have we pitched our tents toward Sodom? Have we become so comfortable with the world's entertainment, the world's priorities, and the world's morality that our gospel warnings sound like a joke coming from our lips? We must repent of our compromise. We must be a people whose lives are so radically different, so oriented around the reality of God's kingdom, that when we speak of judgment, our words have the weight of authenticity.
Second, we must not be discouraged by the laughter. The world will mock. "Scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires" (2 Peter 3:3). Their laughter is not a sign that we are wrong; it is a sign that the prophets were right. We are not called to be popular; we are called to be faithful. We must deliver the whole counsel of God, the good news of salvation through Christ, and the terrible news of judgment for those who refuse Him. We must say with love, with tears, but with unflinching clarity: "Get up, get out of this place, for Yahweh will destroy the city." Whether they listen or whether they jest is up to them. Our task is to make sure that, by our lives and by our lips, no one can ever say that we were only joking.