In this audio message, Scott Brown discusses the topic of how fathers are to protect the hearts of their daughters. On one hand, we see how Christ cared for His mother even while He was on the cross. There was not even an hour that she was without care and protection. On the other hand, we see Lot's negative treatment of his daughters.

Proverbs 31:28-29 (NKJV) - "Her children rise up and call her blessed; Her husband also, and he praises her: 'Many daughters have done well, but you excel them all.'”

The National Center for Family Integrated Churches is pleased to present Fatherhood. This message is entitled Protecting daughters by Scott Brown. Please open your Bibles to Genesis chapter 19. With your finger in Genesis 19 I want to begin with an illustration. And that illustration comes from the place of the center of history, the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, where we find an element of the Christian view of women.

Both men and women are there before the cross. The mother of Jesus, Mary. The woman of the Son being crucified is there experiencing a principle of the kingdom of God. Even at the cross, we see the theme that we see in so many places in Scripture. Men protect women, and that godly men see to it that their women are provided for in unbroken protection all the days of their lives.

So at the cross we see that care for Mary, the mother of Jesus, is being very tenderly transferred to John in the absence of Mary's son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we read in John 19 verse 26, when Jesus therefore saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing by. He said to his mother, woman behold your son. Then he said to the disciple, behold your mother. And from that hour that disciple took her into his own home.

That very hour there would not be one single hour of unbroken protection for this dear daughter of Zion. And so throughout her life Mary was protected first as a daughter in her father's house, then She was married to Joseph and under the nurture and cherishing care of that husband and now at the cross at the very foot of the cross at the center of history we find her entering into a new state of protection by the appointment of her son the Lord Jesus Christ that would always have the daughters of Zion surrounded by the grace of protective men in their lives. Let me make this as the illustration to introduce this text of Scripture and what I'm going to call the doctrine of the protection of daughters. Now one thing we must understand about Christianity, and that is that Christianity exalts womanhood and places its value high above the comforts of all men. Christianity places a woman under protection all of her days.

It places a wife beside her husband. It commands a husband to be giving his life over to her and to suffer death if necessary. It places a daughter under the protective care of her father. It places the sister beside her brother. It places the young girl in the meeting of the church and now the multitude of brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers are a benefit and protection for her all the days of her life.

It places a woman in the meeting of the church where the median instruction of the communication of the Word of God, where prayers, where songs are given, praises lifted up to soothe and bless her soul. It places a woman in the family of God, the body of Christ, so that if she's ever widowed, there is the family of God waiting to care for her in an appropriate way. It places a young girl and a mature woman together as sisters in the communion table among the large family of God. And most of all, most important of all, and all of these things only foreshadow something so enormously marvelous, and that is He places all women who would believe in Him by faith in Christ. For there is neither Jew nor Gentile nor bond or free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all in Christ.

Not only does God all lifelong place a dear daughter of Zion under the protective care of humankind But he literally takes her and he places her in Christ, in the bosom of the Lord Jesus Christ, for her nourishment, for her blessing, for her satisfaction, No matter what might happen to her all the days of her life, see the great love of God toward women. In contrast, women are treated very badly among the cultures and the religions of this world. The Hindus despise the female gender because she's a liability, for her father may someday have to pay a large dowry. So women are not welcomed with rejoicing into this world, and many Hindu men spend all their lives trying to avoid responsibility for the daughters that are in their households because of the great financial burden that might come upon them. Or he may simply kill the female child and get it over with early.

The Muslims do not educate their women. They force their women to get married without their consent. They make them servants. They're not allowed to own property. They're despised from birth.

And they are required to be subjected to the degrading exposures to polygamy. And they have a very strange, strange existence in heaven. The atheist makes a woman an object of licentiousness. The atheist makes her a throwaway, does not care if she's divorced, cares only of her outward appearance, making her a shell, Does not work to protect her heart from anything, or her body from anyone. And her most glorious state that she might be cared for by the welfare system in a hovel somewhere without husband and in a dangerous world that she might be abused and abandoned while the evolutionary cycle goes on.

Would you give your daughter to Rousseau? Give your daughter to Nietzsche? Give your daughter to Desaad? Give your daughter to Hitchens, the great abusers of women in this world. Now we turn to the way a particular man in the Bible related to his daughters.

The story of Lot in Sodom puts before us many just incredibly normal aspects of life, of family life. Notice the everyday practicality and the commonness of this story. There's a businessman. There is a wife. There is a family.

There are daughters. There are friends in social situations and decisions to be made. There's a decaying community outside. There is religion. There is danger in the city.

And there's a door of a household. How plain and ordinary can it be? It sounds like my life and it sounds like your life because it does tell the story of your life and my life in this world. I'd like to give you five issues to consider in Genesis 19. Let me tell you where we're going so you can see it now, and we'll move through these six sections.

First of all, we're going to deal with the first half of Genesis 19 in a section, and we'll entitle that Family Collapse and Sodom. And then the second section, the second half of Genesis 19, we will call Warnings from the Cave. We'll give some historical perspective. Then we will issue a wake-up call to fathers. We will try to identify what is the core of the problem here and we'll move to some application.

Just by way of introduction, I would just like to say that the protection of daughters reached a low point in Lot's household in Sodom. And this brings to us the reality that there are times in history that are better and worse for daughters, and this slice of history would be a low watermark. So let's move to the text here. We see family collapse in Sodom. The account of Lot and his daughters in Sodom is in Genesis 19.

I'll begin reading. Now the two angels came to Sodom in the evening and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. While Lot saw them, he rose to meet them and bowed himself with his face toward the ground and he said, Hear now my lords, please turn into your servants house and spend the night and there wash your feet. Then you may rise early and go your way." And they said, no, but we will spend the night in the open square. But Lot insisted strongly, So they turned into him and entered into his house.

Then he made them a feast, the baked unleavened bread, and they ate." Verse 4, now before they lay down, the men of the city, The men of Sodom, both old and young, all the people from every quarter surrounded the house and they called to Lot and said to him, where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may know them carnally. So Lot went out to them through the doorway, shut the door behind him, and said, Please, my brethren, do not do so wickedly. See now, I have two daughters who have not known a man. Please let me bring them out to you and you may do them as you wish.

Only do nothing to these men since this is the reason they have come under the shadow of my roof." And they said, stand back. Then they said, this one came in to stay here and he keeps acting as a judge. Now we will deal worse with you than with them. So they pressed hard against the man Lot and came near to break down the door. But the men reached out their hands and pulled Lot into the house with them and shut the door.

And they struck the men who were at the doorway of the house with blindness, both small and great, so that they became weary of trying to find the door. Then the men said to Lot, Have you anyone else here? Son-in-law, your sons, your daughters, and whomever you have in the city, take them out of this place, for we will destroy this place because the outcry against them has grown great before the face of the Lord, and the Lord has sent us to destroy it. So Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who had married his daughters, and said, get up, get out of this place, for the Lord will destroy this city. But to his sons-in-law he seemed to be joking." Well, this story illustrates a devastating syncretism in Sodom.

And on display is Lot's failure to protect his daughters. While the protection of daughters is really only one small theme among many of the themes in this narrative, what's described here gives us a very vivid and a very startling example of what lack of protection looks like. And it helps us to understand how a father, through poor choices, can abdicate his responsibility bit by bit, resulting in grave peril of daughters. So Lot's action in offering his daughters to the immoral men of Sodom is an absolute outrage. And our gut response is, how could this man treat his daughters so shamefully?

And we are so repulsed by it that I believe we missed the point. We completely miss what's being said here out of our revulsion from something so terrible. The core of the problem was sinful incursion in Lot's life that expressed itself in the lack of protection toward his daughters. We need to be very careful not to be so quick to distance ourselves from Lot and denounce him. For we ourselves are not exempt from the lessons, from the pressures, from the social issues that were pressing, pressing upon Lot.

We must examine the text and the interpretive links in other places in Scripture to carefully discern what's really happening to Lot and his family so that we would learn the right lesson. Let's talk about interpreting this story. This is really so critical for us. Genesis 19 requires some careful investigation of the various places and personalities that are included in the story. If we just breeze over the narrative, We might be tempted to be filled with righteous indignation against Lot.

A cursory treatment might lead us to think the focus of this text is about the evils of homosexuality. And so if we're not homosexuals, our tendency is to distance ourselves from what took place with Lot and Sodom. And thus, we would miss the clear lessons that are there from Lot's errant example. Because of the horrible things that happened to Lot and his family, We would be tempted to say, that's not me. I'm in a different category.

Considering our own lives, we'd rather dismiss the story rather than to see how it applies to us. This is what we would love to do. When we read of the Pharisees, we think of those other people. And when we read of Lot, we think of those other men. But this is always a mistake.

For we are the Pharisees. We are Lot. We are the characters of Scripture through whom God would communicate to us to help us to understand our depravity our great need for repentance and the enormous value of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ in the midst of all of our sinfulness. So when we examine the broader record of scripture regarding Lot and his life, It becomes apparent that there's something more going on that Moses wants us to understand. Peter gives us a spiritual profile of Lot in 2 Peter 2, 1-10.

And this text gives us the interpretive key to the letter. Peter is speaking of judgment against unrighteousness and how that God through his indignation will deliver Satan and his hosts into chains and darkness. And looking into the past, he writes that he did not spare the ancient world in Noah's day, though Noah was a preacher of righteousness. And then he writes about Lot in the same way. This is one of the most important interpretive keys to this text of Scripture.

2 Peter 2.4, For if God did not spare the angels who sinned but cast them down into hell and delivered them into the chains of darkness to be reserved for judgment, and did not spare the ancient world but saved Noah, one of eight people, the preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemning them to destruction, making them an example to those who afterward would live ungodly and delivered righteous lot. Who was oppressed by the filthy conduct of the wicked for that righteous man dwelling among them tormented his righteous soul day to day and seeing and hearing their lawless deeds then the Lord knows how to deliver the righteous the godly from temptations and to reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment. Those who embrace this narrow view of Lot, this revulsion of him, may be surprised at the positive terms that the Apostle Peter uses to describe what happened in Sodom. And this would help us think clearly about it. In verse 7, he calls him righteous.

In verse 7, he calls him oppressed by the filthy conduct of the wicked. He is tormented in his righteous soul day by day. He is godly. So Peter makes three things clear about Lot. First, Lot was not reveling in the excesses of Sodom.

Second, Lot was outraged by the evil conduct of his fellow citizens. And thirdly, he was deeply conflicted by what he observed around him. I would just like to suggest this. We're not so different than Lot. We see the trends around us and we are absolutely outraged.

We cast judgment on the sins running amok in our culture. We're alarmed by the indicators and like Lot we see what's going on. We don't have our head in the sand. We're distressed about it. But there's no way we can completely disengage from the evils of this culture into which we've been born.

They are inextricably a part of us and they require the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ for our own righteousness. So Lot is a righteous man but we know of this of him, his righteousness was by faith alone. In this sense, like Lot, we share spiritual sonship as sons of Abraham. He believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. He was not saved by his own works but by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.

But knowing that Lot offered his daughters to the men of Sodom is shocking. It's so shocking. It's incomprehensible that he would be called righteous, but this is what the Word of God teaches. Lot was standing in judgment of the culture of Sodom. That's what he was doing there.

In verse 9 we see that the men of Sodom were saying to him, this one keeps acting like a judge. Lot was judgmental toward the wicked men of Sodom. His righteous soul was vexed by what he observed, and he was not going along with it in Sodom, quite like we might think, and he was chided for his judgmental, holier-than-thou attitude in this town. So why did Lot offer his daughters? The text tells us why he offered his daughters.

Pressures to conform. He was being pressed upon by the surrounding men of the city. Their perspective on life, their values were pressing upon him. First, he was pressured by the surrounding situation. Lot was being threatened by the people of the city, not just a few people, but people from every part of the city, every kind of person was there, high and low, from every geographic quarter of Sodom, not just a few.

It was his entire constituency. We need to understand and sympathize with Lot for the fierce external pressure that was upon him to fit into the desires of the people around him. How often do we do? We see the exact same thing. Have you ever felt pressured by your constituency to compromise the principle of Scripture?

Has the track of your lifestyle ever been guided by the opinions of your dearest friends in this life? And there's a pressing upon you for it to follow in their ways that they've learned from their fathers, that their fathers learned perhaps even from Rousseau or Dewey or any of the other great educational outlets of our age. Have you ever made the wrong decision out of the fear of man? Have you ever allowed your family or your own soul to see or do or hear or go somewhere under the pressing fear of man? I'm a man and I am beset by the fear of man, just like every other man I've ever known.

We are very, very much like Lot. Let's go back 500 years and listen to a commentator, John Calvin, who said Lot was prepared to expose his own daughters to dishonor in order to save his guests. There's always priority, isn't there? There's always a principle for why we might withhold something of faith for fear. Calvin says that he was attempting to save these other people's reputations.

And isn't it so that often on the table of biblical principle is someone's reputation? Yours mine, your heritage. Let goods and kindred go, brothers. Let this mortal life also. That's what the Reformers would say to us today and what this text says as well.

Let's fast forward to the 20th century and listen to a 20th century commentator Kent Hughes. He says Lot placed the sanctity of hospitality above the sanctity of his family. Someone said that Lot preferred some other social grace above the protection of his daughters. Lot did not want to rock the boat with the men of Sodom. He desired to coexist.

He desired to be fitting in there. Even though there is a deep conflicting about it, his righteous soul was vexed. And yet, he did not want to appear too odd in Sodom. Second, it must have seemed normal enough for him to offer his daughters. It must have seen normal enough.

Perhaps not completely normal. There was a vexing. There was a torture in his soul, but it seemed, among the alternatives, it seemed reasonable enough. It was a middle path somehow. Here we find the evidence of the incremental moral slippage under the influence of Sodom.

Looking back at the narrative, we see him first pitching his tent towards Sodom. And then later we find him living in Sodom. And finally, it seems many commentators believe he's a civil magistrate in Sodom, possessing the position that favor would imply. And the deriving of support from that favor, that constituency, that that hope for legacy there in that city. And now he has something to protect.

He has his position among the men of Sodom as he sits at the gates there in a place of influence. People don't become base in a moment. None of us do. But after many moments, after many years, after many compromises, nobody just falls in to wrong thinking. It takes time and external pressure and the slow dulling of the sensibilities, one moment at a time.

So what did Lot do exactly? He did three things. He opened the door to his daughter's vulnerability. Second, by opening the door to their vulnerability, He was actually promoting it. And thirdly, he withdrew his protection.

So it's just so painfully obvious that Lot did not protect his daughters. He did what was unthinkable to our sensibilities, But his behavior reminds us that there are times in history when the social pressures can cause fathers to disconnect from their daughters in particular ways at the table of social pressure. Lot lived in a culture where there was ferocious pressure to withdraw the protection from his daughters. And it was normal enough. It was actually thinkable for him to offer his daughters to men inside him.

You know, men, we do everything rationally. We think it through. We weigh the options right, don't we? We look at all the angles. Scenario A gets me here.

Scenario B gets me there. Scenario C puts me to navigate right down the middle of the line. And yet it isn't such a middle line, is it? When we look back after the years that the moth has eaten and the wolf has devoured. So for we who are living in Sodom, let me suggest that we are living in Sodom on this issue of the protection of daughters.

We should ask ourselves some questions. Here's one question. What pressures are there in our culture that would cause us to withdraw protection from our daughters and leave them vulnerable? This is something every man must ask in this age of the lack of protection of women? Or how about this question?

What are the normal things specifically that we do in our culture that add up to the withdrawing of our protection? Or am I as vigilant as I should be in protecting my daughter? I would just suggest that rather than condemning Lot for his behavior, we should examine our identify with him as a righteous man, examine our behavior. There was another father named Jacob who had a daughter named Dinah. And we learned that Dinah was permitted to go out to see the daughters of the land in this unprotected kind of state.

And a terrible result happened as a result of that. There are many stories, there are many warnings which bring this principle to us. But Lot is an example of a father who did not protect his daughters. His lifestyle in Sodom opened the door. What Lott did was socially acceptable in Sodom, and it brought him a defiled and a broken family.

Even though he was vexed by the lifestyles in Sodom and was criticized for his conservatism, Lott found it fit enough to stay there and he maintained a level of social acceptability there that ensured that he'd be a player in that town and at the same time he disconnected his protection. That's act one in Genesis 19. Let's move to the second half now, mornings from the cave. Beginning in Verse 15, we pick up the second half of chapter 19. When the morning had dawned, the angels urged Lot to hurry, saying, Arise, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be consumed in the punishment of the city.

And while he lingered, Notice the mercy of God. God sends angels to take this man by the hand. He can't leave on his own. God is merciful to men in Sodom. He doesn't hate them.

He stretches out his hand in mercy to these righteous men trapped, vexed in their souls. And even though they don't have the moral courage on their own, He would even take them by the hand and give them the hand of an angel to take them. That is God now, even this morning, extending the hand of an angel from heaven to help you to take this moral authority back and to remove yourself from Sodom and its influences? Well, the angels are here and Angels are here. And being merciful to Him, they brought Him out and set Him outside the city.

So it came to pass when they had brought them outside that he said, Escape for your life, do not look behind you, nor stay there in the plain. Escape to the mountains lest you be destroyed. Then Lot said to them, Please know my lords, indeed now your servant has found favor in your sight, and you have increased your mercy, which you have shown to me, by saving my life. But I can't escape to the mountains, lest some evil overtake me there and I die. See now, the city, the city is near enough to flee to.

It's a little city please let me escape there is it not a little one and my soul will live there and he said to him see I have favored you concerning this thing also that I will not overthrow this city from which you've spoken hurry escape there for I cannot do anything in Sodom until you arrive there. Therefore the name of city was Zohar. Then the Lord rained brimstone and fire on Sodom from the Lord out of the heavens. So he withdrew those cities, all of the plain, all of the inhabitants of the cities that and what grew on the ground. But, but his wife looked back behind him and she became a pillar of salt.

And Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord. And he looked out towards Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the plain and he saw and behold the smoke of the land which went up like the smoke of a furnace what a remarkably dramatic scene Abraham standing there looking and seeing the smoke rising from Sodom. And it came to pass when God destroyed the cities of the plain that God remembered Abraham, the cities in which lot had dwelt. Then Lot went up out of Zoar and dwelt in the mountains and his two daughters were with him for he was afraid to dwell in Zoar and he and his two daughters dwelt in a cave. And now the firstborn said to the younger, Our father is old, and there is no man on the earth to come to us by the custom of all the earth.

Come let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him that we may preserve the lineage of our father so they made their father drink wine that night and the firstborn went in and lay with her father and he did not know when she lay down or when she arose It happened on the next day that the firstborn said to the younger, indeed I lay with my father last night let us make him drink wine tonight also and you go in and lie with him that we may preserve the lineage of our father. Then they made their father drink wine that night also and the younger arose and lay with him and he did not know when she lay down or when she arose. Thus both the daughters of Lot were with child by their father. The firstborn bore a son and called his name, and you'll hear this name in Scripture, Moab. He is the father of the Moabites to this day.

And the younger she also bore a son and called his name Ben Ammi. And he is the father of the people that you will read about many times in the Bible as well. And the devastation and the havoc they wrought and his name was Ammon to this day. Well how should we approach this very sensitive, very difficult text that's hard to even speak about but yet God desires us to contemplate it. This is a study of many things, but it's also a study for when daughters lose hope.

And we find in the story that they lost hope in their perceived hopeless state. Lot's eldest daughter explained to the younger the dilemma that they find themselves in as he saw it. The narrative says this. Now the firstborn said to the younger, our father is old, and there is no man on the earth to come into us as is the custom of all the earth. What is happening here?

You have an older and a younger daughter. And Lot's eldest daughter grew panicked. By lack of hope, she saw no human means for the fulfillment of her longings as a woman. All women can understand this, can't they? Again, I would just suggest that all daughters are like lots of daughters.

They have choices to make regarding their hopes and their fears, regarding their leadership in their households. It has been very remarkable to me at this conference the precious picture that has been put before us in the form of two daughters, Anna-Sophie and Elizabeth Bakken, an older daughter and a younger daughter. It is enormously important What a younger daughter does under the care of an older, and the older in bringing to a younger. This is so important. Many of you here are sitting with the older and the youngest daughter.

And perhaps that youngest daughter is a baby in arms at home. But this is a reality of family life that's brought before us here. How critical it is that the oldest daughter has her heart captured by the Lord Jesus Christ. But this perspective in the heart of this older daughter brings us face to face with some important realities. First, the inclinations of the firstborn has a big impact on the siblings that follow them.

You know, in this case the older daughter could have been better. I've always been so grateful for my oldest daughter, Kelly, who led her siblings and her cousins to the waters of life what a blessing it is that that would be the case fathers fall down on your face and pray for your oldest daughters Cry out to God for their sanctification and for their holiness. If you're a first born, you daughters here, how many first born daughters do we have? Could you please raise your hands? Oh my.

We have so many, so, so many here. I would just like to speak so directly to you. Some of you are so little and some of you are women. God has placed you in a unique place in your family. And you are a pacesetter, you daughters of Zion.

And God, by His sovereign grace, has put you there so that much would hinge upon your behavior. Your younger siblings are watching you by example. You eldest daughters, guard your hearts. It's the wellspring of life. Guard your heart toward your brothers and treat them honorably.

And your little sisters, as your sweet, sweet sisters, let not the bitterness and the wrath and the disappointments fill your heart regarding these who have been placed down line to you This is the way that God has ordered your family by His sovereign hand. There's no mistake about it, you daughters. This is a divine appointment. Don't blow your appointment, as this eldest daughter of Lot did. What else about these daughters?

Lot's eldest daughter was filled with fear. I would just ask you, eye to eye, sweet daughters of Zion, you eldest ones, is there fear in your heart at all now? Be warned if there is. Let God sanctify you of that fear here. Maybe even today would be a day of repentance from all fear, you daughters.

She was afraid of the future of her heritage, and she acted upon those fears. This is the same fear that has gripped every daughter in every age. She fears that somehow she'll be left out of marriage and family. Every young woman I've ever known at some point comes to this terrible struggle, this angst in her soul. And every woman struggles with this boogeyman and it says, no one will ever love me.

There are no men around that I would even want to marry. I'm not attractive enough to attract a good man. The pool of men that I would be interested in is too small. This is the voice of the devil toward a daughter. And you fathers, how important it is to know what's going on in the heart of your daughters.

Are you spending enough time so that the words can be communicated? Are you so obsessed with your own reputation that you can't hear anything negative coming from her heart to deal with it, to help her with it, to sanctify her, to bless her and pray for her in the midst of her struggles and fears. And oh man, when was the last time you were exempted from fear and wrong ideas? Often fathers shut their daughters down when they say things that are uncomfortable. They should never do that Because those fears need to be communicated so that they can be brought into the light of the Word of God for ministry there.

I believe that There are particular dangers for men and women. I believe that men struggle with fear and lust. Those are their two greatest liabilities. With women, I just believe that fear, loneliness, self-pity, and purposelessness are the greatest threats to the heart of a daughter. Those four things.

And so a father should always have his antenna up to these terrible forces at work in her soul. Let me give you an urgent admonition. I desire now to say something that the Spirit of God would use here in this room. There is one area that a father should be tuned into, And that, brothers, is the music that your daughters are listening to. The music of this world will destroy the soul of your daughter.

The music of this world will sound so pretty, and it will take her into every form of hopelessness, lovelessness, fear of the future. The brokenhearted sounds of this world will corrode. The soul of your daughter will disappoint her. They will actually enlarge all of her longings so that they would overtake her and so disappoint her and make her another depressed daughter of Babylon. Listen to the love songs, brothers.

Get them out of your houses. Daughters, allow your father to get the heartbreaking, heart-wrenching songs out of your life. They don't belong there. Yes, they may sound so pretty, but they do not take you to the waters that flow from the throne of God. When a young woman begins to be listening to these songs, it nourishes her fears.

And if a daughter's virtue is being compromised due to bad musical influences, a father must step up and help his daughter understand it. And yes, he may lead her in a direction that she does not want to go. But this is what shepherds do. They lead their sheep to the greenest pastures and the clearest waters. That's what shepherds do.

And that assumes that there are worse pastures there that she's eating on and there is dark water that she's drinking And it's for shepherds to lead to the sweetest waters and the very best pastures. Hopelessness in a young woman is a powder keg. Fathers are your daughters insecure about the future? Then come to their aid and refresh them with the salvation of God, help them to trust God, and to lean not on their own understanding. We don't know exactly why lots of daughters had such a dim outlook.

They were likely normal girls with normal temptations. But what we do know is that when they looked at the future, they could not see how God would bring them husbands and a heritage and a lineage. And so they compromised. That we know for certain. The heart of their disobedience can be traced to their fears regarding marriage.

Is that practical enough? So if you're a daughter and your outlook toward the future seems dim to you, you're tempted to jump ahead of God, then just slow down, be patient, God will provide. God caused you to be born in this world, He is sovereign. Lot's daughters panicked and sought a pragmatic alternative and this text explains the perverted course they took to solve their problem and they said let us make our father drink wine. It's a despicable, terrible situation.

Now in this narrative we can see At least two ways in which the protection of Lot's daughters broke down. First of all, you can see the breakdown of Lot's protection in the character of his daughters. Lot's daughters' character qualities are revealed in striking fashion. They place their trust in human means. They do whatever they have to do to bring about whatever result they desire.

In this case, they get their father drunk to suit their own ends. These daughters were manipulative. They were children of Sodom. They were as what Ray Stedman says they were. He says this.

These two girls were virgins in body, but they were already debauched in mind. They had long since grown accustomed to obscenity and unrestrained luridness. So up in the cave on the mountainside they seized the thinnest tissue of excuses and the story ends in a foul orgy of drunkenness and incest. He continues and says this, Lot had nothing but heartbreak and grief to show. For his years in Sodom the Lord said for whoever would save his life will lose it.

So Lot trying to do the best, get the best out of both worlds, lost all and has become for all time the picture of the Christian who is saved but only as through fire. He has nothing but wasted years to look back on and eternity ahead. Let's just be honest about a number of things here. First, we live in a culture like this. Let's just speak specifically.

Let's talk about our college system that's destroying so many of our sons and daughters. An amazing article appeared in Christianity Today a couple of years ago by Vigan Giorian, a professor of theology at Loyola College in Baltimore. He wrote an article called Dorm Brothel. And he spoke of the new debauchery and the colleges that make them happen. He says this.

Still, in most American college coed dorms, the flesh of our daughters is being served up daily like snack jerky. We no longer need young men to be wolves or foxes to consume that flesh. There are no fences to jump over or chicken coops to break into. The gates are open wide. There are no guard dogs that have been posted.

It's easy come, easy go, nor are our daughters the only ones getting hurt. The carnival, the promiscuity carnival that is college life today, is also doing great damage to our sons, deforming their characters, their attitudes toward the opposite sex. He says, I am witnessing a perceptible dissipation of manly virtue among the men that I teach. He calls this the brave new world, the grisly underbelly of the college system that nobody's willing to expose but is obvious to everyone who's there. The parents don't want to think about it but they know it's there.

It's too socially difficult to jump through that hoop with your friends in this world and like Lot and Sodom we're doing the same thing. We send our sons and daughters to the end of that carnival out of social pressure. We prefer some greater social grace. Here are a few things that our daughters need to hedge their vulnerability from the gripping fears that we see that they experience and we also see in Lot's daughters. First they need to have a father who will debunk the destructive ways of this world and show them how to avoid them.

The problems, the marriage problems in Lot's household went back to his child training. Often our children grow up and we're distressed about what happens, but the problem is we did not communicate to them. We did not speak to them when they sat in our house, when we walked by the way, when we were lying down, when we were rising up. That's the root of the problem. We've not spoken the gospel into their dear hearts every day so that they can see the beauty of the Lord and desire to inquire in his temple second our daughters need to have a clear vision of Christ and they need to be encouraged to become like Him.

We learn that Christ is the sweetest of all He sums up, all that is good everywhere in Scripture. He loved righteousness and hated lawlessness and therefore God, His God, anointed Him with the oil of gladness above all His companions. This is the kingdom of heaven. The daughter needs to know that. The daughter needs Christ preached to her so she can see the happiness of the kingdom of heaven, the healing that's there, the joy of the daughters of Zion.

That's what they need to see and they will not have it unless their fathers rise up and become the shepherds that God has appointed them to be. Thirdly, you can see the breakdown of protection in the leadership of Lot as a father. It's easy to say Lot was a terrible father who wasn't lovingly and effectively training his children. And so God has given lot to us as an example of what not to do, and to give us a social sensibility for the pressures that are upon us. This is here for our instruction, that we would see the pitfalls so that we might not walk the same pathway.

Notice that what happened here happens in many homes. Let's just speak about the use of alcohol. My belief is that the Bible does not restrict the use of alcohol. I don't see it in Scripture. But let's be careful with that.

Alcohol made the unthinkable actually plausible in this household. This story should give us pause to carefully consider the presence of alcohol in our homes. I'm not making a biblical case for total abstinence, but I would like to say that we have two cases of alcohol in the first 19 chapters of Genesis, and neither one of them is positive. Noah and Lot, their drunkenness was a very disheveling thing for those that followed them. We should be very cautious, we should be very careful if we choose alcohol in our homes.

Let's get some historical perspective. A Lot did what was unthinkable to our ears, but his behavior reminds us that there are times in history when fathers do disconnect from their daughters. When we look at history, the spectrum of behavior regarding daughters, some periods are worse than others. Lots is despicable. I believe ours is also going to go down as a despicable, unprotected era for daughters.

We ought not to think that we're exempt from this root cause here. The protection of daughters in 19th century America was a different kind of affair. Tomorrow, we'll be celebrating the Titanic at the Titanic dinner. And at that time, the idea of an unprotected daughter was almost unknown. And there were men actually protecting daughters traveling across the ocean.

They were their guards. And yet today, you see thousands of women wandering unprotected in the colleges and all over the place. There's no one there to care for them. And so there are forces in every culture that impinge on this issue of protection. I would like to issue a wake-up call to fathers here today.

The example of law should be a wake-up call, and it should prompt us to ask, what are the socially acceptable ways that we disconnect our protection and expose our daughters to destructive influences of this world. There are so many different kinds of fathers out there. Are you one of these fathers? Are you the narcissistic father? The father who's the couch potato?

He doesn't really care. He spends the time, his time on things that interest him alone. He has no energy to communicate a philosophy of life. It's live and let live. Are you like the nice guy father?

This father is a favorable disposition toward his daughter. He's understanding in every way. He takes her out to lunch regularly, and he takes the path of least resistance. He won't withhold anything from his sweet daughter's heart, even though it might be destructive. He is so fearful of losing her favor.

He is such a nice guy, but he has an unprotected daughter. Are you a nice guy father? The supportive father. This father idolizes his daughter's feelings. He helps her to be everything she wants to be, even if it means an individualistic focus on her own inclinations, even if she wants something that is not for her by the creation order.

He is a supportive father, But his daughter is completely unprotected in this world. How about the feminist father? This is the evangelical, church-attending father who doesn't have any idea what the Bible says about manhood and womanhood. He thinks men and women have the same role. He has absolutely no biblical roadmap.

He gets his roadmap from his friends that he went to college with. He gets his roadmap from the evening news. He gets his roadmap from the next thing that he reads. And the feminist ideology that propels the corporation he works for also propels his home. And every day, he's surrounded by unprotected women.

He's so used to it, it doesn't even faze him. All the immorality happening around him in his company, all the divorces that are going on, all the office romances, He just has a blind eye to it and he will not stand up against it because he is a feminist father and he goes to your evangelical church. Or how about the harboring father? This is the father is so restrictive. He keeps her home but he tells her nothing.

He pours no hope into her soul. He spends no time with her. He does not sit in his house with her. He does not walk by the way. He does not lie down and rise up, bringing words of life into her soul.

There are many different kinds of fathers here in this world, but there is one kind of father that speaks so clearly. It is the protective Father heart of God that would teach every man to do exactly the same thing. Let's talk about the core of the problem. The core of the problem is male passivity. It's perhaps the most dangerous quality of manhood.

Men, we just like to do what we like to do. Every man I know has enough time to do everything he wants to do. There are no excuses, but because of that we're passive in the areas that we need to be active. Our energy is misplaced, it's misdirected, and it's going into vessels which will pass away. And yet there is a vessel that will never pass away, the vessel of the daughter's heart.

OK, let's move to some application. I would just like to use an imperative. We find imperatives all over scripture and I believe it's appropriate for those who would speak the Word of God to issue in the imperative and so I'm going to do that now on the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, not my own. Fathers, you must take active steps to guard your daughters from harm. You must take active steps.

Something must be done. One of the most heartbreaking sections of the law is found in Deuteronomy 22, verse 23 to 27. Eight of some of the most disconcerting, discouraging words regarding daughters is found there. It profiles a situation of a daughter in the countryside. And while she is out in the countryside, she's violated.

And Deuteronomy 22, 23 says, For he found her in the countryside, and the behold woman cried out. And here are these eight words, and there was no one there to save her there was no one there to save her and who would save your daughter brothers fathers fathers are given the responsibility to be the heads of their daughters, to protect their hearts and their virginity, and to prepare them for the next protective state into which they will be transferred. Fathers, take active steps. Don't let this world lead you around by its nose. The dead are there.

Here's another application. Here's some ways that you can protect them. Position them for a hope-filled life by filling their minds with the sufficiency of all things found in the Word of God. In this way you'll fortify them by your good deposit and clear teaching. This is the silver bullet.

If there's a silver bullet, here it is. Speak the Word of God into the heart of your daughter. It's as simple as that. Open this precious testimony of life and all her lifelong commit to it. Hour upon hour.

Couple of weeks ago we had a conference called the Masters Plan for Fathers where we do exposition of fatherhood passages and we spoke of this principle of fatherhood and we issued the 3, 000 hour challenge. Here's the 3, 000 hour challenge. Brothers, for 20 years, commit to reading this book to your family 30 minutes a day. For 20 years, It's 3, 000 hours of deposit. We issue that challenge today and exceed it.

Instruct them and the destructive influences around them by exposing the harmful messages propounded by their peers and carried by many of the popular songs of this day. Expose the work of the devil. Name names. Don't be afraid, brothers. This is the wolf lurking at your door.

Identify him so that when she is there she is protected even by the constitution of her own soul, the clarity of her own values, the precision of her understanding of her station in life, in her moment, and what's at stake there. Let her know who she is so that if that bad man is there, she knows how to act and what to do. And then draw near to them by taking time to listen to your dear daughters and responding to their concerns by being available. Give them clear and firm direction even when it grates against their inclinations. It's appropriate to let them know that all feminine inclinations are not appropriate.

All of their desires are not helpful and that they cannot simply follow their hearts lest they lose the essence of everything they're longing for. Fathers, be men. Speak the truth in love, brothers. Don't be afraid from any fear. And next, embrace the principle of the two states of daughterhood.

God has so arranged humanity so that When it comes to daughters, there are only two states that are clearly communicated in scripture. There is the state of daughterhood under the headship and protection of her father. All her life long, he is her head. And he is responsible for protecting everything about her life from the thoughts of her mind to her virginity, from the mental to the spiritual to the physical, every piece of it. And Then the Bible speaks of the giving of her in marriage, that sons leave and cleave and daughters are given, and they are transferred into the protective care of their husbands' households to be now nourished and cherished by these husbands who lay down their lives as Christ laid down his life for the church.

God so desires protection of daughters that he has conceived of an unbroken protection. And then if the sovereignty of God would have it, perhaps this daughter of Zion may lose her husband. And How would we know what to do when a daughter of Zion loses her husband? We should go to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ and learn from Jesus himself as to what we would do when a daughter of Zion falls unprotected. We see this theme in so many places in Scripture that men protect women, that godly men see to it, that women are provided for in an unbroken protection all their life long.

We end here where we began, at the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. The intersection of all wisdom, the summary of all love is there. And there at the cross we see Mary, the mother of Jesus, is transferred to John in the absence of her son. Jesus sees his mother and then he sees the disciple whom he loved standing by her and he says to his mother woman behold your son and then he says to the disciple behold your mother. What was going through John's mind?

And then from that hour, that disciple took her into his own home. It is the will of the Lord Jesus Christ that there would not pass one single unprotected hour for the daughters of Zion. From the time that they're little girls, to the time that they're young women in their husbands' houses, and then to the time of the death of their own husbands. Not for one single hour are they unprotected. But the Lord Jesus Christ has provided for their whole life long to be under the blessed care of a head.

O fathers, take this responsibility. Cry out to God for them how easy it is for them to lose heart. Everything the devil has for them would kill and steal and destroy their hope. Everything in this world would want them under the protective care of Rousseau and Hitchens. Let it not be true of us brothers, but that we would save a generation of daughters in our time by our protective care.

Expose the wolf brothers, silence the liar, protect your precious lambs, let goods and kindred go. This mortal life also. Would you pray with me? Thank you for the cross which instructs us of all of our vulnerabilities, all of our sins, oh Lord we come to the cross where there's repentance, where there is salvation by faith alone, where we can become sons of Abraham, not by our righteous deeds, but by the cleansing blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. We come to Him now for everything, for our salvation and for counsel, regarding the protection of the daughters of Zion, in Jesus' name.

The National Center for Family Integrated Churches is dedicated to proclaiming the sufficiency of scripture for church and family life and to the establishment of biblically ordered churches. For more information, resources, and products, please visit our website at www.ncfic.org. You