Genesis 19:11
And they smote the men that were at the door of the house with blindness, both small and great: so that they wearied themselves to find the door. And they smote the men that were at the door of the house with blindness, both small and great: so that they wearied themselves to find the door.
Heavenly messengers struck the violent men at Lot's door, both small and great, with blindness so that they wearied themselves groping to find the entrance. They did this on a mission of mercy to protect righteous Lot and bring him safely out while messengers of wrath waited to destroy the city. Though blinded, the men still persisted in trying to reach the door, showing hardness of heart that fear could not stop. Their condition marked the limit of divine forbearance and the end of mercy's pleading, when rebellion that despised grace could no longer be allowed to continue. The ruin that followed with fire from heaven stands with the flood to warn that persistent unchecked corruption brings certain destruction.
Blinding at Lot's Door
Heavenly visitors struck the men crowded at Lot's door, both small and great, young and old alike, with blindness, so that they exhausted themselves and wearied themselves trying to find the entrance. They groped for the door yet were left unable to find it, for God's angels by this stroke protected Lot from the violent crowd outside his house. The blinding kept the attackers from reaching those inside and helped Lot escape safely. In this the closed way to the blinded men stands against Lot's open door of safety for the unbelievers shut out and the righteous delivered.
The angels had been sent on a mission of mercy to the gates of Sodom to rescue righteous Lot from its fiery doom. It stands as one instance in all ages of holy angels ministering to God's people. While messengers of wrath waited to destroy the city and its inhabitants, the angels led Lot away.
Though struck blind the men still groped for and persisted in trying to reach the door. That persistence showed hardness of heart accompanying the outward blindness. Without that deeper blindness the blow would have made them afraid and stopped their wicked attack. Their pressing on in spite of the stroke exemplifies the extreme licentiousness and wickedness that evil seeks to restore in the world.
Their condition marked the end of mercy's pleading, long rejected, and the limit of divine patience and forbearance. The city's corruption had become so deep that its inhabitants had passed the limits and faced God's wrath and judgment about to begin. God would no longer allow lives of rebellion that despised His grace to continue.
Sodom's Sin and Judgment
The inhabitants of Sodom were steeped in licentiousness and iniquity like those before the flood, having corrupted their way before God. By following the imaginations of their own corrupt minds and dishonoring God by wicked inventions, they became corrupt in body and soul and hated Him who made them. Through indulgence in destructive lusts they no longer discerned the difference between the pure affections and attributes of human nature given by God and destructive lust, living dead in trespasses and sins beneath a poisonous atmosphere surrounding the soul.
The ruin of the cities of the plain was caused by idleness, for the iniquity of Sodom was pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness, with failure to strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. Idleness enfeebles the mind, debases the soul, and perverts the understanding, bringing vice and crime in its train by giving opportunity to surprise and destroy the unguarded in idle hours. Sodom was wholly given over to sexual vice and extreme corruption, seen in the men intent on wicked sexual violence in trying to reach those inside Lot's house even after being struck with blindness. That licentiousness is what evil seeks to restore in the world.
God made the race male and female on the principle of a division of labor, each sex the complement of the other in body, mind, and spiritual endowments. The universal and unmistakable distinction in costume guards that distinction, acting as a perpetual restraining monitor and preventive police more efficacious than laws and courts against Sodom-like corruption. Discarding it evidences guilty intent and betrays the virtue of both sexes, warning what society at large will become when God-given distinctions are cast aside. Sodom-like sin also includes forward, immodest pursuit between the sexes that breaks down reserve and true decorum, such as young women making advances to young men, flirting, common cheap talk and ways, seeking each other's society, and sitting in meeting exchanging notes while a message from God is given. Such conduct is offensive to God and a mockery of the Christian name, misapplying powers and perverting privileges and opportunities, especially for professed Sabbath-keepers with great light, and it leaves souls destitute of the Spirit of God. Unless moral taste is refined and Christ becomes an abiding principle in the soul, few of the youth so led will see heaven, but they will reap what they have sown and meet God's close judgments and terrible things in righteousness and lose their souls.
Its corruption flourished through disobedience and casting aside God's law and commandments, through wrong education and selfish indulgence, and through fellowship with evil spirits and the corrupt practices that followed. Its punishment while Lot was saved proves that God does not excuse transgression by mercy. Because corrupt practices spread as inhabitants taught others to join them until sins reached heaven and the earth was defiled by its inhabitants, God destroyed the city. He blotted out its entrancing beauty, though once highly favored and made very beautiful, with bolts of fire from heaven on the day Lot left, while messengers of wrath waited to pour forth fiery blasts to consume all the inhabitants and leave the place bleak and bare. Standing with the flood, and with Nineveh, that destruction warns that sin which opened the floodgates of woe and kept steadily increasing brings certain destruction when left unchecked.
Choosing Home and Company
Lot entered Sodom fully intending to keep himself free from iniquity and to command his household after him, but having chosen by outward appearance for temporal advantage he signally failed. He went in wealthy but left with nothing, led out by an angel's hand while messengers of wrath waited to destroy the city and its suburbs. The ruin shows that in choosing a home the moral and religious influences surrounding the family must be considered first of all. They must be placed above temporal advantages, beautiful country, fertile land, flourishing cities, hope of greater prosperity, and worldly wealth and honor.
The corrupting influences about him affected his own faith, and his children's connection with the inhabitants bound up his interest in a measure with theirs. Surrounded by temptation, lax morality, unbelief, indifference to religious things, examples of rebellion against parental and divine authority, and associations and attachments with infidels, unbelievers and enemies of God, their piety was counteracted and their character harmed. He lost his possessions, some of his children perished, his wife became a pillar of salt, and he himself escaped with loss, while the city's corruption had so shaped his children that they could not distinguish good from evil or sin from righteousness. Like Lot, many see their children ruined and barely save their own souls, with life-work lost and life a sad failure.
Voluntarily placing oneself and the family in an atmosphere of worldliness and unbelief displeases God and drives holy angels from the home. Where duty calls to trying positions, watching and praying and trusting in the grace of Christ enables standing uncorrupted. True wisdom would secure less worldly prosperity and make sure of the immortal inheritance and title to it, rather than secure worldly wealth and honor for children at the expense of their eternal interests and find those advantages a terrible loss.
The lesson drawn from Sodom as a place of moral pollution from which Lot was delivered is to flee dangerous surroundings rather than remain among them and risk being corrupted. Lot took his family into Sodom and placed them among worldly people of all grades, high and low. Calling youth to a place where they associate closely with such company repeats Lot's mistake and exposes them to corrupting influence, for God's design is for youth to be educated in some other place apart from that molding association.
The same warning forbids choosing a home or placing God's work without regard to moral and religious associations, and forbids placing a religious institution in a wicked setting. Establishing a sanitarium on Hill Street would be like Lot going into Sodom, and placing God's work or home among wealthy, irreligious, self-indulgent people exposes it to their molding influence and evil associations. Those associations undermine piety and devotion and hedge up the way so success does not attend the Lord's work, though Sodom's outward setting was like the garden of Eden and highly favored and beautiful with its suburbs before fiery blasts made it bleak and bare.
Warning for Present Time
Sodom stands as a warning of what happens to a society endangered by license and the rejection of self-restraint, and the question whether the world is becoming a second Sodom presses that warning upon present moral peril. The condition of Sodom and Gomorrah is now repeated in cities and even in country towns. There youth were trained to neglect diligent habits, to love excitement, to glorify self, and to follow the imagination of their own evil hearts, and the same training is given to children in this age. Then as now the result is depravity, cruelty, violence, and crime. When men and women professing godliness live in want of strict purity, in carnal living sold unto sin and practicing adultery, the present world becomes a second Sodom and Gomorrah.
Even in a corrupt society in every age there are people like Lot who can stand for God. Sodom was a city steeped in sin and moral corruption, yet it contained such a man. Sodom was indeed a great and wicked city, yet God had Lot in Sodom, and in the same way He has a people in wicked New York who pant as the hart after the water brooks for the pure waters of truth. Therefore the wicked city is ready to be worked, and divine power will carry the truth there.
The striking of the men at the door with blindness so that they could not find it illustrates a shut door for unbelievers, while Lot had an open door of safety. The image of blinded people groping for the door applies to those who fail to discern the signs of the times. In the destruction of Sodom only two or three were saved despite the warning they had received, showing that the majority's choice does not determine who is saved.
The story of Sodom shows what a land of liberty and advantage becomes when wealthy winebibbers and blasphemers give tone to public opinion and take the lead in the highest circles of society where money is god. There intoxicating drink shuts away reason, men openly degrade their powers and express contempt for the Son of God. Sacred things are insulted in public, and such blasphemy is laughed at as a bright saying. Young men seated at the same tables are exposed to corrupting influence.