But the men put forth their hand, and pulled Lot into the house to them, and shut to the door.
Heavenly messengers put forth their hand and pulled Lot inside the house and shut the door, saving him from the violent crowd outside that threatened him and his guests with being torn apart. That rescue was a mission of mercy to save righteous Lot from fiery doom and begin leading him safely out of the corrupt city before its destruction. The shut door set Lot with an open way to safety inside apart from the unbelievers left outside for destruction, showing that those who are ready enter with Christ before the door is shut at the end of time. Lot had come to need such rescue because he chose his home in Sodom for outward beauty, fertility and hope of worldly wealth and honor without enough regard for its moral and religious influences. Therefore in choosing a home moral and religious influences must be considered first of all above temporal advantage, since an atmosphere of lax morality, unbelief and indifference counteracts parental influence and surrounds children with temptation.
Rescue at the Door
The men at the door were heavenly messengers sent on a mission of rescue, who put forth their hand and pulled Lot inside the house to themselves and shut the door. They drew him in away from the violent crowd outside that had threatened him and his guests, setting a shut door between him and his attackers. By that intervention they protected him in the moment of danger and saved him from being torn apart by the mob.
The shut door marked a separation between those protected inside and those left outside, with Lot given an open door to safety while the unbelievers of Sodom were left outside for destruction. In the same way, at the end of time those who are ready enter in with Christ and the door is then shut.
That pulling inside began Lot's deliverance out of the corrupt city before its destruction, as he was saved and led safely out from its midst. While he was thus rescued, the disobedient inhabitants were punished, showing that mercy does not leave disobedience unjudged. Only a few escaped despite having warning.
Sodom's Wickedness and Judgment
Sodom was steeped in licentiousness and degrading sexual vice, indulging destructive lusts set against the pure affections God gave as attributes of human nature until they could no longer discern them, corrupt in body and soul. Its impurity included carnality and adultery among men and women professing godliness, making the present impure, carnal world a second Sodom and Gomorrah. Forward sexual advances, flirting between young men and women, common cheap talk and ways, and breaking down all barriers of reserve and true decorum marked its spirit, and such forwardness and lack of modesty and Christlike humility is offensive to God. Those who continue in it are destitute of the Spirit of God, having misapplied their powers and perverted their privileges and opportunities, and with the end near will meet close judgments and terrible things in righteousness and reap a harvest they will not be pleased to garner. Its evil was the same as Canaan's abominations and communion with evil spirits, for which Sodom was consumed.
Its corruption also grew from abundance and idleness, for idleness weakened the mind, debased the soul, and perverted understanding. The inhabitants chose to follow the imaginations of their own corrupt minds and dishonored God by wicked inventions, walking in the imaginations of their own hearts in headstrong, independent, wicked lives as persistent despisers of grace, becoming haters of God who made them. Their corrupt practices spread as they taught them to others, until the city's sins brought destruction, and their morals warn of the danger of living among people who reject biblical faith and seek to undermine it. Unbelief and indifference to religious things, rejection of God's law, and letting winebibbers and blasphemers whose god is money set public opinion and lead society belonged to the same ruin, showing what happens when virtue and self-restraint have no safeguards and what could keep the world from becoming a second Sodom.
Erasing the God-given distinction between man and woman shows the sexual vice to which society at large will be given over. A universal and unmistakable distinction in costume is a preventive guard over virtue, going where the wearer goes and acting as a perpetual restraining monitor, while casting it aside is evidence of guilty intent and treason to the virtue of both sexes.
God means what He says and punishes steadily increasing sin with literal destruction by bolts of fire from heaven. Sodom stands in a line with Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit that opened the floodgates of woe, the Flood that destroyed the world saving only Noah and his sons, and Nineveh threatened with destruction, then spared on repentance, then destroyed when it returned to idolatry and its sins reached to heaven. When wickedness like that of Sodom and the antediluvian world could no longer be perpetuated, in mercy He proved Himself a God of vengeance strong to punish, for mercy does not leave disobedience unjudged. The same God who punishes is able to bless abundantly, full of compassion, ready to pardon, going forth to meet the returning sinner, and ready to heal the bruised and smitten.
Lot's Costly Choice
Lot chose his dwelling in Sodom for outward appearance and worldly advantage, drawn by a beautiful and fertile country and a flourishing city and by hope of greater prosperity and worldly wealth and honor, without reference to and without enough regard for the moral and religious influences and associations that would surround himself and his family. That choice looked to temporal advantage rather than to what would shape piety and right character in his household. He fully intended to keep himself free from iniquity and to command his household after him, but he signally failed. The corrupting influences about him weakened his own faith, and his children's connection with the inhabitants of Sodom bound up his interest with theirs.
The result was terrible loss ending in a lost life-work and sad failure. His possessions were destroyed, his children were ruined with some perishing, his wife became a pillar of salt, and he who entered Sodom rich left with nothing, barely saving his own soul. He had to be pulled and led away by an angel's hand while messengers of wrath waited to pour forth fiery blasts to consume the inhabitants and blot out that highly favored city and its suburbs. What had been entrancing beauty in a place God had once made very beautiful was made bleak and bare.
Yet Lot lived amid moral pollution yet stood uncorrupted and represents the faithful who remain amid such corruption. There are Lots in every Sodom, for even cities steeped in sin and moral corruption have people like Lot among them. God had His man Lot even in wicked Sodom.
Angels Protecting God's People
The men at the door were heavenly messengers sent on a mission of mercy to rescue righteous Lot from fiery doom. They put forth their hand and pulled him inside the house to them and shut the door, protecting him from the violent crowd and saving him from the destruction of the city. This rescue is one example of how holy angels have in all ages ministered to God's people, protecting Lot and leading him safely out of Sodom. It took place as the corruption of the city reached the limit of divine forbearance.
It shows that in all ages angels are near to Christ's faithful followers. The armies of heaven are encamped about all who love God to deliver them from the vast confederacy of evil arrayed against all who would overcome. Believers are to look to these unseen protectors, whose interposition preserves them from seen and unseen dangers. The full extent of that preservation will only be known in the light of eternity, when it will be seen that the whole family of heaven was interested in the family below and that messengers from the throne attended daily steps.
As God had His man Lot even in wicked Sodom, so He still has His own people even in a great and wicked city like New York. Those people are panting after pure truth as a deer pants after water. Because they are there, the city is ready to be worked and must not be left untouched, for the power of God will carry the truth to them.
Warnings for Homes Today
In choosing a home moral and religious influences are to be considered first of all, above temporal advantages, a beautiful and fertile country, a flourishing city, or hope of greater prosperity and worldly wealth and honor. The atmosphere of lax morality, unbelief and indifference to religious things counteracts parental influence, surrounds children with temptation and unfavorable associations to piety and right character, keeps examples of rebellion against parental and divine authority before the youth, and leads many to form attachments for infidels and unbelievers and cast in their lot with the enemies of God. Voluntarily and needlessly placing oneself in an atmosphere of worldliness and unbelief displeases God and drives holy angels from the home. Securing worldly wealth and honor and worldly advantage at the expense of eternal interests ends in terrible loss, a lost life-work and sad failure, while true wisdom may give children less of worldly prosperity but makes sure of title to the immortal inheritance. Where duty calls to trying positions, watchfulness and prayer trusting in the grace of Christ will enable one to stand uncorrupted.
Sodom pictures a dangerous place like Brookfield, whose moral atmosphere and associations endanger one weak in moral power. God commands to flee from such a place as from Sodom and to separate entirely from its company. Staying there with unsubdued appetite and passions keeps God from prospering and blessing, while repentance, confession and forsaking of sin with the will aroused in reliance wholly on the strength of Jesus still gives another chance to overcome. The account warns against bringing young people into harmful surroundings and associating them with worldly people of every kind, including by sending them to Battle Creek. Establishing a religious institution such as a sanitarium in wicked surroundings would be like Lot going into Sodom, as with a sanitarium on Hill Street, and choosing a home or locating God's work among evil, irreligious associations for apparent advantage is warned against because their molding influence undermines piety and hedges up God's work. Sodom's outward surroundings were like the garden of Eden, unlike the Hill Street property, which had no spare land or opportunity to enjoy nature.
Genesis 18 and 19 call hearers to seek the Lord most earnestly and to take a more decided stand for the Lord. They call for being not only professional believers in the truth but obedient to all of God's requirements, with heartfelt confession and earnest prayer as the Spirit softens and subdues hearts. Sodom's wickedness warns what happens when virtue and self-restraint have no safeguards, and raises the question of what could keep the world from becoming a second Sodom. Its morals warn of the danger of living among people who reject biblical faith and seek to undermine it. Rejection of God's law does not bring freedom but leads to a polluted society like Sodom, with the present impure, carnal world becoming a second Sodom, marked by want of strict purity, carnality, being sold unto sin, and practicing adultery even among professing godliness. The history shows what a land of liberty and advantages will become when winebibbers and blasphemers set public opinion and lead the highest circles of society and money is their god.
Heavenly messengers put forth their hand and pulled Lot inside the house and shut the door, saving him from the violent crowd outside that threatened him and his guests with being torn apart. That rescue was a mission of mercy to save righteous Lot from fiery doom and begin leading him safely out of the corrupt city before its destruction. The shut door set Lot with an open way to safety inside apart from the unbelievers left outside for destruction, showing that those who are ready enter with Christ before the door is shut at the end of time. Lot had come to need such rescue because he chose his home in Sodom for outward beauty, fertility and hope of worldly wealth and honor without enough regard for its moral and religious influences. Therefore in choosing a home moral and religious influences must be considered first of all above temporal advantage, since an atmosphere of lax morality, unbelief and indifference counteracts parental influence and surrounds children with temptation.
Rescue at the Door
The men at the door were heavenly messengers sent on a mission of rescue, who put forth their hand and pulled Lot inside the house to themselves and shut the door. They drew him in away from the violent crowd outside that had threatened him and his guests, setting a shut door between him and his attackers. By that intervention they protected him in the moment of danger and saved him from being torn apart by the mob.
The shut door marked a separation between those protected inside and those left outside, with Lot given an open door to safety while the unbelievers of Sodom were left outside for destruction. In the same way, at the end of time those who are ready enter in with Christ and the door is then shut.
That pulling inside began Lot's deliverance out of the corrupt city before its destruction, as he was saved and led safely out from its midst. While he was thus rescued, the disobedient inhabitants were punished, showing that mercy does not leave disobedience unjudged. Only a few escaped despite having warning.
Sodom's Wickedness and Judgment
Sodom was steeped in licentiousness and degrading sexual vice, indulging destructive lusts set against the pure affections God gave as attributes of human nature until they could no longer discern them, corrupt in body and soul. Its impurity included carnality and adultery among men and women professing godliness, making the present impure, carnal world a second Sodom and Gomorrah. Forward sexual advances, flirting between young men and women, common cheap talk and ways, and breaking down all barriers of reserve and true decorum marked its spirit, and such forwardness and lack of modesty and Christlike humility is offensive to God. Those who continue in it are destitute of the Spirit of God, having misapplied their powers and perverted their privileges and opportunities, and with the end near will meet close judgments and terrible things in righteousness and reap a harvest they will not be pleased to garner. Its evil was the same as Canaan's abominations and communion with evil spirits, for which Sodom was consumed.
Its corruption also grew from abundance and idleness, for idleness weakened the mind, debased the soul, and perverted understanding. The inhabitants chose to follow the imaginations of their own corrupt minds and dishonored God by wicked inventions, walking in the imaginations of their own hearts in headstrong, independent, wicked lives as persistent despisers of grace, becoming haters of God who made them. Their corrupt practices spread as they taught them to others, until the city's sins brought destruction, and their morals warn of the danger of living among people who reject biblical faith and seek to undermine it. Unbelief and indifference to religious things, rejection of God's law, and letting winebibbers and blasphemers whose god is money set public opinion and lead society belonged to the same ruin, showing what happens when virtue and self-restraint have no safeguards and what could keep the world from becoming a second Sodom.
Erasing the God-given distinction between man and woman shows the sexual vice to which society at large will be given over. A universal and unmistakable distinction in costume is a preventive guard over virtue, going where the wearer goes and acting as a perpetual restraining monitor, while casting it aside is evidence of guilty intent and treason to the virtue of both sexes.
God means what He says and punishes steadily increasing sin with literal destruction by bolts of fire from heaven. Sodom stands in a line with Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit that opened the floodgates of woe, the Flood that destroyed the world saving only Noah and his sons, and Nineveh threatened with destruction, then spared on repentance, then destroyed when it returned to idolatry and its sins reached to heaven. When wickedness like that of Sodom and the antediluvian world could no longer be perpetuated, in mercy He proved Himself a God of vengeance strong to punish, for mercy does not leave disobedience unjudged. The same God who punishes is able to bless abundantly, full of compassion, ready to pardon, going forth to meet the returning sinner, and ready to heal the bruised and smitten.
Lot's Costly Choice
Lot chose his dwelling in Sodom for outward appearance and worldly advantage, drawn by a beautiful and fertile country and a flourishing city and by hope of greater prosperity and worldly wealth and honor, without reference to and without enough regard for the moral and religious influences and associations that would surround himself and his family. That choice looked to temporal advantage rather than to what would shape piety and right character in his household. He fully intended to keep himself free from iniquity and to command his household after him, but he signally failed. The corrupting influences about him weakened his own faith, and his children's connection with the inhabitants of Sodom bound up his interest with theirs.
The result was terrible loss ending in a lost life-work and sad failure. His possessions were destroyed, his children were ruined with some perishing, his wife became a pillar of salt, and he who entered Sodom rich left with nothing, barely saving his own soul. He had to be pulled and led away by an angel's hand while messengers of wrath waited to pour forth fiery blasts to consume the inhabitants and blot out that highly favored city and its suburbs. What had been entrancing beauty in a place God had once made very beautiful was made bleak and bare.
Yet Lot lived amid moral pollution yet stood uncorrupted and represents the faithful who remain amid such corruption. There are Lots in every Sodom, for even cities steeped in sin and moral corruption have people like Lot among them. God had His man Lot even in wicked Sodom.
Angels Protecting God's People
The men at the door were heavenly messengers sent on a mission of mercy to rescue righteous Lot from fiery doom. They put forth their hand and pulled him inside the house to them and shut the door, protecting him from the violent crowd and saving him from the destruction of the city. This rescue is one example of how holy angels have in all ages ministered to God's people, protecting Lot and leading him safely out of Sodom. It took place as the corruption of the city reached the limit of divine forbearance.
It shows that in all ages angels are near to Christ's faithful followers. The armies of heaven are encamped about all who love God to deliver them from the vast confederacy of evil arrayed against all who would overcome. Believers are to look to these unseen protectors, whose interposition preserves them from seen and unseen dangers. The full extent of that preservation will only be known in the light of eternity, when it will be seen that the whole family of heaven was interested in the family below and that messengers from the throne attended daily steps.
As God had His man Lot even in wicked Sodom, so He still has His own people even in a great and wicked city like New York. Those people are panting after pure truth as a deer pants after water. Because they are there, the city is ready to be worked and must not be left untouched, for the power of God will carry the truth to them.
Warnings for Homes Today
In choosing a home moral and religious influences are to be considered first of all, above temporal advantages, a beautiful and fertile country, a flourishing city, or hope of greater prosperity and worldly wealth and honor. The atmosphere of lax morality, unbelief and indifference to religious things counteracts parental influence, surrounds children with temptation and unfavorable associations to piety and right character, keeps examples of rebellion against parental and divine authority before the youth, and leads many to form attachments for infidels and unbelievers and cast in their lot with the enemies of God. Voluntarily and needlessly placing oneself in an atmosphere of worldliness and unbelief displeases God and drives holy angels from the home. Securing worldly wealth and honor and worldly advantage at the expense of eternal interests ends in terrible loss, a lost life-work and sad failure, while true wisdom may give children less of worldly prosperity but makes sure of title to the immortal inheritance. Where duty calls to trying positions, watchfulness and prayer trusting in the grace of Christ will enable one to stand uncorrupted.
Sodom pictures a dangerous place like Brookfield, whose moral atmosphere and associations endanger one weak in moral power. God commands to flee from such a place as from Sodom and to separate entirely from its company. Staying there with unsubdued appetite and passions keeps God from prospering and blessing, while repentance, confession and forsaking of sin with the will aroused in reliance wholly on the strength of Jesus still gives another chance to overcome. The account warns against bringing young people into harmful surroundings and associating them with worldly people of every kind, including by sending them to Battle Creek. Establishing a religious institution such as a sanitarium in wicked surroundings would be like Lot going into Sodom, as with a sanitarium on Hill Street, and choosing a home or locating God's work among evil, irreligious associations for apparent advantage is warned against because their molding influence undermines piety and hedges up God's work. Sodom's outward surroundings were like the garden of Eden, unlike the Hill Street property, which had no spare land or opportunity to enjoy nature.
Genesis 18 and 19 call hearers to seek the Lord most earnestly and to take a more decided stand for the Lord. They call for being not only professional believers in the truth but obedient to all of God's requirements, with heartfelt confession and earnest prayer as the Spirit softens and subdues hearts. Sodom's wickedness warns what happens when virtue and self-restraint have no safeguards, and raises the question of what could keep the world from becoming a second Sodom. Its morals warn of the danger of living among people who reject biblical faith and seek to undermine it. Rejection of God's law does not bring freedom but leads to a polluted society like Sodom, with the present impure, carnal world becoming a second Sodom, marked by want of strict purity, carnality, being sold unto sin, and practicing adultery even among professing godliness. The history shows what a land of liberty and advantages will become when winebibbers and blasphemers set public opinion and lead the highest circles of society and money is their god.