Genesis 19:14, commentary and pictures

Lot went out to urge his sons-in-law to rise and flee the place because it was about to be destroyed. They treated his warning as a joke and as madness, and his daughters sided with their husbands against him. Long sharing in Sodom's sins had corrupted their morals so they could not tell good from evil, and being rich and comfortable in a city that still looked beautiful and secure they could not believe it would perish by divine wrath. He returned grieving with his appeal failed except for his wife and the two daughters in his house, and that night the mockers and careless inhabitants perished while only a few who were warned were saved. The same scorn met Noah's warning of the flood and meets the final call to come out from sin and from Babylon, so escape requires a marked separation from sinners with no compromise and no turning back.

Warning Given and Mocked

Lot went out and repeated the angels' words to his sons-in-law, urging them to get up and get out of the place because the Lord would destroy the city. He went to entreat his children who had married among the Sodomites, carrying to them the warning he himself had received that the Lord would destroy Sodom. He heeded the warning himself and placed himself under the heavenly messengers' protection, and was saved, an example of God giving advance notice of judgment so that those who trust and obey can escape it. The likeness of large cities now becoming as Sodom and Gomorrah while the world grows worse and worse is a sign of the times for God's people to discern, warning against moving into cities or making large plants there without divine counsel.

His hearers treated him as one that mocked, regarding the warning as a joke, jest, idle tale, fanaticism, and raving enthusiasm. They derided his fears and warnings and turned from them with a jest, mocking his faith and not heeding him. They dismissed the warning as superstitious fear because the city appeared unchanged and secure with no sign of coming destruction. His daughters, influenced by their husbands, thought him mad.

Lot returned sorrowfully having failed except with his wife and the two daughters still in his house. Only a few were saved though all had been warned. The mocking sons-in-law perished when Sodom was destroyed, and the scoffers perished in the flames that night while the cities of the plain rioted in pleasure. That very night the door of mercy was forever closed to the wicked, careless inhabitants and their opportunity for mercy ended.

Angels had come to Sodom in mercy toward righteous Lot. They protected him, placed him under their protection, and led him safely out. He was led out by an angel's hand while messengers of wrath waited to destroy the city and to pour forth fiery blasts to consume the inhabitants.

Reasons for Rejection

Long dwelling in Sodom had made the children and sons-in-law partakers of its sins, their morals perverted by association until corrupting influence was woven into character so they could not distinguish good from evil or sin from righteousness and could not believe destruction would come. They were rich with great possessions and comfortable where they were, and because beautiful, rich, fertile Sodom appeared unchanged and secure with no sign of coming destruction they dismissed the warning as superstitious fear. They could not believe that such a place could be destroyed by the wrath of a sin-avenging God.

The city's surroundings looked like the garden of Eden even though the city was wicked, which made the warning seem like mockery. Lot's daughters were influenced by their husbands, and his family ties to Sodom had weakened the force of his appeal. They would not have accepted a clearer warning either, for Sodom's people had passed the boundary of mercy and no further light was given them before they were destroyed.

On the night before, the cities of the plain rioted in pleasure while a deadly lethargy blinded the scoffers. Ease-loving voices cried peace and safety with no cause for alarm while the young, frivolous, pleasure-loving, and their parents slept on at ease.

Choice That Ruined Household

Lot chose his home in Sodom for temporal advantage and by outward appearance, without regard for the moral influence of its associations. He entered Sodom intending to keep himself free from its iniquity and to command his household after him, but he failed in that purpose, and the corrupting influences around him weakened his own faith. His children's connections and marriages with the inhabitants bound up his interest with theirs, and their ruin illustrates the lasting danger of choosing worldly prosperity and surroundings at the expense of moral and eternal good.

The atmosphere of lax morality, unbelief, and indifference to religious things counteracted parental influence, with examples of rebellion against parental and divine authority ever before the youth, so that associations and attachments with infidels, unbelievers, and enemies of God proved unfavorable to piety and right character. He went into Sodom rich and left with nothing, led out by an angel's hand while messengers of wrath waited to pour forth fiery blasts to consume the inhabitants and blot out the entrancing beauty of that highly favored city and its suburbs, making bleak and bare a place God had once made very beautiful. Evil associations are detrimental to piety and devotion, principles approved by God can be undermined by unfavorable circumstances, and worldly molders can hedge up the way of the Lord's work, so none should follow his example.

Judgment Mercy and Causes

God gives advance notice of judgment so that those who trust and obey can escape it, and Lot was warned to leave because the Lord would destroy the city. Lot heeded the warning, placed himself under the protection of the heavenly messengers, and was saved. When wrongdoing fills a nation, Lot's warning voice in Sodom urging his family to leave shows that someone gives warning and instruction.

Sodom's corruption spread as people taught others its forbidden practices, and when its sins reached heaven the Lord's patience ended and He destroyed the city. Its inhabitants walked in the imaginations of their own hearts in headstrong, independent wickedness that God could not perpetuate.

Sodom's inhabitants were punished for disobedience while Lot was saved, which refutes the idea that God's mercy makes obedience to His requirements unnecessary. The people ate, drank, bought, sold, planted, and built until Lot left Sodom on the day it was destroyed by fire and brimstone, and their ordinary activities became sinful when appetite and daily concerns displaced eternal interests, showing that God punishes such abuse.

Lot had no right to punish his sons-in-law himself even though they mocked his warning that the Lord would destroy Sodom and treated it as mockery. Human beings cannot decide or carry out God's punishment, but God as Lawgiver and moral ruler and moral governor has the right to execute the penalty for breaking His law in strict justice.

Their destruction was mercy in which God proved Himself a God of vengeance against persistent, independent despisers of His grace. Yet He abundantly blesses and is full of compassion and ready to pardon and to meet and heal fallen, bruised men.

The same guilt rests on those now on the very borders of the heavenly Canaan who with all advantages and light and evidences of truth do not purify their souls by living up to them. The gracious Lord bears long with perversity, but the end is near and long-forbearance will be exhausted. He will do terrible things in righteousness in close judgments and wrath upon those with great light who have not lived up to it, abandoning the once blessed and once favored.

Lot warned his sons-in-law to get out of Sodom because the Lord would destroy the city, but they derided his fears and warnings as idle tales and a jest and turned from them. On the night before Sodom and Gomorrah were consumed by fire, while the cities of the plain rioted in pleasure, these scoffers perished in the flames. That very night the door of mercy was forever closed to the wicked, careless inhabitants and their opportunity for mercy ended.

The destruction was ruin of the cities of the plain by bolts of fire and brimstone from heaven as warned, showing men have not learned that God means what He says. It stands in a steady increase of sin from Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit and opening the floodgates of woe, to the flood that destroyed the world saving only Noah and his sons, to Sodom, to Nineveh first spared on repentance then destroyed when sin reached to heaven, to a world now fast becoming as before the flood in trampling God's law and the seventh-day Sabbath. That ruin is seen as caused by idleness, for idleness enfeebles the mind, debases the soul, and perverts the understanding.

Its causes were indulgence and wicked inventions and licentiousness that left the inhabitants corrupt in body and soul, steeped in licentiousness, hating God who made them, and unable to discern the pure affections and attributes of human nature given by God from destructive lusts. Sodom stands as an example of grave moral peril and extreme corruption when self-restraint and purity have no safeguards through casting aside God's law, and as a warning of the consequences of a world given over to sin. Its want of strict purity included carnality and adultery even among professed godliness, and sexual and moral corruption like that associated with the Canaanites' abominations and communion with evil spirits, against which distinctive clothing for men and women is presented as a restraint. Whole families today who corrupt their way before God in the same manner are as sinful as those before the flood and in Sodom and need to be terribly alarmed.

Forward flirtation and breakdown of reserve and true decorum between young men and women is becoming like the Sodomites, a common, cheap, low perversity offensive to God and a mockery of the Christian name by professed Christians and professed Sabbath-keepers. It destroys even common sense and leaves souls destitute of the Spirit of God, misapplying powers and perverting privileges and opportunities. Unless moral taste is refined and Christ becomes an abiding principle in the soul, few of the youth will ever see heaven but will reap a harvest they have sown which they will not be pleased to garner.

Prophecy of Last Days

The call to get up and get out of Sodom before its destruction requires a marked separation from sin and sinners, with no compromise between God and the world and no turning back to secure earthly treasures, and as with Noah the same coming out required of Lot is required in the last days in answer to heaven's call to come out of Babylon to be not partakers of her sins and receive not of her plagues. Lot's warning to his family that Sodom would be destroyed was not heeded but counted as raving enthusiasm, leaving them unprepared, and it stands as one instance of the same rejection given to Noah when contemporaries laughed to scorn and mocked his warning of destruction by a flood, to Christ's warning of what was coming upon Jerusalem, and to warnings that the end of all things is at hand. It illustrates how it will be when the Son of man is revealed, when farmers, merchants, lawyers and tradesmen wholly engrossed in business, men at ease, full of amusement and absorbed in buying and selling, will have the day of the Lord come upon them as a snare, as a prowling thief approaches with stealthy tread.

Their destruction by fire also symbolizes the destruction of the world by fire. That destruction stands in a steady increase of sin from Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit and opening the floodgates of woe, to the flood that destroyed the world saving only Noah and his sons, to Sodom destroyed by bolts of fire from heaven as warned, to Nineveh first spared on repentance then destroyed when sin reached to heaven, to a world now fast becoming as before the flood in trampling the law of God and the seventh-day Sabbath, which shows men have not learned that God means what He says. Sodom's wickedness in which Lot's sons-in-law treated his warning as mockery stands as a warning of the licentiousness Satan seeks to bring back.

Large cities are now becoming as Sodom and Gomorrah while the world grows worse and worse, marked by corruption and worldly pleasure and by depravity, cruelty, violence, and crime. This likeness to Sodom is a sign of the times that God's people should discern, warning them not to move into cities like Melbourne or make large plants there without the counsel of God. Lot warning his sons-in-law to leave Sodom before its destruction while they regarded him as joking shows his presence there as representing faithful people who remain amid cities steeped in sin and moral corruption. Even a very wicked city still holds people who belong to God and thirst for pure truth as the hart panteth after the water brooks, so sinful cities and towns still have Lots among them, and a great and wicked city like New York has a people ready to be worked and must not be left untouched but must be worked when workers deny self and go to them, with reformers to defend God's laws and uphold standards in physical life, education, and the heart.

Call to Holy Living

The account in Genesis 18-19 presses for most earnest seeking of the Lord and a more decided stand for Him, calling for more than professional belief in truth to full obedience to all divine requirements, with earnest prayer and hearts softened and subdued by the Spirit to confession. In choosing a home the moral and religious influences surrounding the family are to be considered first, for voluntarily placing the family in an atmosphere of worldliness and unbelief displeases God and drives holy angels from the home. The family should not be needlessly exposed to influences unfavorable to Christian character, though where duty calls God will enable watchfulness and prayer trusting in Christ's grace to stand uncorrupted. Lot entered Sodom intending to keep himself free from iniquity and to command his household after him, but he failed, the corrupting influences weakened his own faith, and his children's connections and marriages with the inhabitants bound up his interest with theirs.

The atmosphere of lax morality, unbelief, and indifference to religious things, with examples of rebellion against parental and divine authority ever before the youth, counteracted parental influence and led to associations and attachments with infidels, unbelievers, and enemies of God that are unfavorable to piety and right character. Those who secure worldly wealth and honor for their children at the expense of eternal interests will see their children ruined and barely save their own souls, losing their life work in sad failure, whereas true wisdom would accept less worldly prosperity to make sure of the immortal inheritance. Taking the family into Sodom warns against placing young people among worldly people of every kind and in settings, places, and associations marked by depraved practices, because exposure can stain the purity of the soul. Lot himself stood uncorrupted amid Sodom's moral pollution, in contrast to one who had returned to a similarly corrupting environment and needed to separate from it.

Dismissing a true warning of coming judgment as fanaticism, jest, joke, or idle tales leaves people unprepared so that they perish when destruction comes, yet only a few were saved even though all had been warned. A free and favored land becomes as Sodom when wine-drinking, blasphemous men of wealth give tone to public opinion and take the lead in the highest circles where money is god. There bold public contempt is shown for the Son of God, solemn warning of coming destruction is laughed at, and youth are led astray, yet God witnesses every word and act to be written in the books of final accounts for judgment. Distinctive clothing for men and women serves as a restraint against society becoming sunk like Sodom in sexual and moral corruption.

Forward flirtation and breakdown of reserve and true decorum between young men and women is becoming like the Sodomites, a common, cheap, low perversity offensive to God and a mockery of the Christian name, which destroys even common sense, leaves souls destitute of the Spirit, misapplies powers, and perverts privileges and opportunities. The gracious Lord bears long with such perversity, but the end is near, long-forbearance will be exhausted, and He will do terrible things in righteousness in close judgments and wrath upon those with great light who have not lived up to it. Unless moral taste is refined and Christ becomes an abiding principle in the soul, few of the youth will ever see heaven but will reap a harvest they have sown which they will not be pleased to garner.