Genesis 19:15, commentary and pictures

At dawn the angels urgently commanded Lot to arise and take his wife and the two daughters still in his house out of Sodom lest they be consumed in the iniquity of the city. He lingered from attachment to family and possessions and blunted discernment, so the angels seized him with his wife and daughters by the hand and led them out, holding back judgment until they were outside. That iniquity was corrupting licentiousness and rebellion against God's law that ruined body and soul until God would bear with it no longer and destroyed the city by fire the same day Lot went out. His peril grew from choosing a home for outward prosperity without regard to moral influences, entering rich but leaving with nothing and losing wife and children to Sodom's corruption. So the hastening is God's final merciful warning requiring prompt and entire separation from sin and sinners with no looking back, a call now applied to coming out of Babylon and the doomed cities before judgment falls.

Angels' Urgent Rescue

At dawn the angels hastened lingering Lot with startling urgency, commanding him to arise and take his wife and the two daughters still in his house out of Sodom before they were consumed in the iniquity of the city. Their command was an act of mercy to rescue the family from the judgment about to fall.

He delayed and lingered because he was attached to family and possessions and did not grasp how urgently judgment required him to leave. He was sorrowful at leaving married children, reluctant to go far from Sodom, distrustful of God, with sensibilities blunted by long association with corrupting influences so that he could not discern God's works and purposes and trust himself to obey. The angels seized him with his wife and daughters by the hand and led them out, for without their intervention they would have perished. They could do nothing until the family was outside the city, and the storm of divine judgment was held back only until these poor fugitives made their escape.

Once outside they were left with Another, He with whom Abraham had pleaded, who commanded escape with startling urgency to flee for life without looking back and without tarrying one moment from regret at leaving so beautiful a home. Hesitancy or delay was now fatal, and to cast one lingering look at the devoted city would cost life. The rescue answered Abraham's prayer, for in all the cities of the plain not even ten righteous persons were found, yet the one man who feared God was snatched from destruction.

Lot had received the strangers into his home and persisted when they first declined, because he knew they would be exposed to danger in the street, a duty shaped by courtesy and concern for others. Those sheltered strangers became his protectors, guiding him and his family to safety from the doomed city. Their mission urgently rescued righteous Lot and led him safely away before the city's fiery destruction.

Lot's wife looked back toward the doomed city, an act of unbelief and presumptuous rebellion that brought God's judgment upon her as a pillar of salt. His delay left her in peril. Their haste shows the need to act promptly when warned to flee danger and protect one's family from the evil around them. God sent messengers to warn that He had decided to destroy the city and that Lot must flee without delay, bidding him arise and gird himself and flee in all haste, for God does not carry men when they can walk, and his own will had to unite with God's will in carrying him out, because his own will and muscles had carried him into Sodom.

Sodom's Consuming Iniquity

The iniquity that would consume all who remained was licentiousness corrupting body and soul, carnality, want of strict purity, and adultery. Its people chose to follow the imaginations of their own corrupt minds, dishonored God by wicked inventions, and indulged destructive lusts. They continued until they no longer discerned the difference between the pure affections God gave to human nature and destructive lust, and by this became as sinful as those before the flood, whose wicked works brought destruction. Whole families today are corrupting their way in the same steeped licentiousness and need to be terribly alarmed lest they be consumed with the city.

The cities of the plain degenerated from lightness and frivolity to debasing sins where inclination and passion bore sway over reason, self was their god, and the knowledge of God was nearly obliterated through selfish indulgence of corrupt passions. That corruption cast aside God's law, and its pollution stands as the example of what such casting aside produces. Abundance of idleness was part of the evil that led to ruin, learned through holidays, lack of diligent habits, love of excitement, glorifying self, and following the imagination of evil hearts. Its result and training was depravity, cruelty, violence, and crime, the same outcome as in the world in the days of Noah.

Corruption grew as people taught others their defiling practices, until its sins reached heaven and God would bear with them no longer. He destroyed the inhabitants and the beautiful land they had defiled. He blotted out the entrancing beauty of that highly favored city and its suburbs, making bleak and bare a place He had once made very beautiful.

Because of its sin Sodom was destroyed by fire and brimstone and bolts of fire from heaven upon its wicked inhabitants, to rid the earth of the curse of their contaminating influence. It fell the same day Lot went out, showing that God means what He says about judgment for sin. Lot was saved because he did not corrupt his way before God.

Sodom serves as a warning of what a world governed by unchecked sin may become, of extreme wickedness and sexual license and the ruin that follows unchecked sin and the need to guard against temptation. It was destroyed for the same sin found among the Canaanites, and its judgment warns against those evils. Its corruption is the comparison for the widespread sexual immorality and moral pollution of the present world. The same carnal sin now revealed even in men and women professing godliness has made the present world a second Sodom and Gomorrah in danger of being consumed.

Sodom is what society at large becomes when virtue is unguarded. The protection against being consumed in that iniquity is a universal and unmistakable distinction in the costume of man and woman, which goes where the wearer goes and abides as a perpetual and restraining monitor over virtue. Discarding that distinction is evidence of guilty intent and is traitorous to the virtue of both sexes, opening the way to Sodom at large.

Mercy Closing in Judgment

The hastening of Lot came at the moment when mercy ceased to plead with the guilty inhabitants, as God's final merciful warning on which escape depended. Only Lot with his wife and two daughters were spared while all the rest were consumed by fire sent down from heaven, so that only three were saved despite having received the warning and only a few escaped although the city had been warned. This proves that men cannot reject the warnings God in mercy sends without punishment.

Disobedience brings the final penalty of transgressing God's law, and mercy does not carry transgressors into glory. Obedience is absolutely essential to eternal life, for no one can get to heaven as well by transgressing the law as by obeying it. God commands and man must obey without seeking a way to be saved without obedience, for salvation depends on keeping all of God's commandments with perfect obedience and ceasing to transgress.

The hastening shows both God's abundant blessing, compassion, and readiness to pardon and heal the fallen, and His strength to punish persistent independent despisers of His grace. The inhabitants walked in the imaginations of their own hearts in headstrong, independent, wicked lives of impurity and crime, and God in mercy proved Himself a God of vengeance in destroying them because He could not perpetuate such lives. 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 shining upon them do not purify their souls by living up to them, making themselves like Sodom and the antediluvian world. The city's corruption is a warning of the judgments that come upon those who receive great light yet persist in sin and resist God's patience.

Sodom stands in a history of sin growing worse since Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit and opened the floodgates of woe, bringing the flood that left only Noah and his sons. Sin has steadily increased until the world is fast becoming as it was before the flood, and God means what He says about judgment for sin, for because of its sin Sodom was destroyed by bolts of fire from heaven. The iniquity that hastened Lot out lest he be consumed now fills cities and even country towns, being idleness learned through holidays, lack of diligent habits, love of excitement, glorifying self, and following the imagination of evil hearts, with the same training and outcome as in Sodom and in the world in the days of Noah, resulting in depravity, cruelty, violence, and crime.

Lot's Costly Home Choice

Lot chose his home by outward appearance without reference to his associations, drawn to the fertile plain and beautiful country and flourishing city for greater prosperity and worldly wealth and honor, without regard to the moral and religious influences that would surround his family. That choice to settle in Sodom for worldly and financial advantage exposed his household to its corrupting influence and bound up his interests with those of its people. The material promise of the place was allowed to outweigh the danger of settling where he and his might be consumed in the iniquity of the city.

He went into Sodom rich and wealthy but was led out in the morning by an angel's hand with nothing, 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. His possessions were destroyed through constant contact with evil, and he left the wicked city having lost everything he had. He had entered intending to keep himself free from iniquity and to command his household after him, but he failed, for the corrupting influences around him weakened his own faith. Only where duty calls does God enable a person to stand uncorrupted amid moral pollution, through watching and praying and trusting in the grace of Christ.

The atmosphere of lax morality and unbelief and indifference to religious things, with rebellion against parental and divine authority and attachments to infidels and unbelievers, counteracted parental influence and ruined character and piety. His children's connection with Sodom bound up his interests with theirs, their moral sense was so damaged that they could not distinguish good from evil, and the evil of the parents was transmitted even to the children. Even fleeing the city did not ensure that its influence had left him, for the habits and customs acquired there remained with him, showing that people may be shaped by worldly surroundings without realizing how much they have assimilated to them. His lingering unbelief cost him his wife and left him able to save only himself and two daughters whose morals were already corrupted by Sodom, while some children perished after mocking his faith and his married children and riches were lost. The end was a soul barely saved, with ruined children and a lost life work and a sad failure.

The result warns families to choose homes carefully and not to pursue worldly advantages without regard for morals and religion. Moral and religious influences must come first, above beautiful country and fertile land and flourishing city and greater prosperity and worldly wealth and honor, and true wisdom accepts less worldly prosperity in order to make sure of the immortal inheritance. No one should needlessly expose the family to unfavorable influences, for voluntarily placing oneself and family in an atmosphere of worldliness and unbelief displeases God and drives holy angels from the home, and gaining temporal advantages at the expense of eternal interests is a terrible loss.

Present Call to Separate

The morning command to get up and get out means there must be a marked and entire separation from sin and sinners and from places of moral pollution and dangerous association, with no compromise between God and the world and no turning back to secure earthly treasures, because the moral atmosphere corrupts one who is weak in moral power with unsubdued appetite and passions. God requires that separation to be prompt and complete, for delay and pleading for one's own terms bring loss, as lingering unbelief cost Lot his wife and left him able to save only himself and two daughters whose morals were already corrupted. Disobeying the call to flee prevents God from prospering and blessing, yet the same warning gives another chance to repent, confess sins and forsake them, relying wholly on the strength of Jesus to overcome.

In the last days this separation is coming out of Babylon before its destruction, with God's people hurried out of doomed churches before judgment as Lot was hurried out of doomed Sodom, and the angels' haste supplies the comparison for the loud cry. The account therefore calls for seeking the Lord most earnestly and taking a more decided stand, to be not only professed believers in the truth but obedient to all God's requirements, with confession, softened and subdued hearts, and earnest prayer. It means to leave the cities and do outside them the work that can be done outside instead of staying inside for convenience, taking workers out rather than gathering them inside and making religious interests first so unbelieving workers may be converted.

Locating homes or God's institutions among wealthy, irreligious, self-indulgent people for apparent advantage is warned against, for their molding influence and evil associations are detrimental to piety and devotion and hedge up the Lord's work, and establishing an institution in a wicked setting is like Lot going into Sodom. Lot went in rich and was led out in the morning by an angel's hand with nothing while messengers of wrath waited to pour forth fiery blasts to 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. The condition of large cities becoming as Sodom and Gomorrah because the world grows worse and worse is a sign of the times that must be discerned, so that moving without God's counsel to make large business plants in cities such as Melbourne blinds eyes to that sign and holds people in places ripe for destruction.

Even cities steeped in sin contain Lots whom God calls as reformers to stand for His law and serve others, showing that faithful people can be found in wicked towns. God had Lot in great and wicked Sodom, and likewise has a people in wicked New York who pant after pure truth as the hart pants after the water brooks, so that city is ready to be worked through self-denying labor as the power of God carries the truth there. Lot's presence in the wicked city exposed his family to many evils when they could have done the same work living some distance away, showing the danger of remaining amid widespread wickedness and corrupt morals that undermine faith in the Bible. Bringing young people to Battle Creek and associating them with people of every kind is like taking a family into worldly and corrupt Sodom, exposing them to harmful influences, and the urgency to get the family out before destruction underscores the need to guard youth from corrupt settings, associations, and company.

Modern cities are compared to Sodom and Gomorrah because pleasure-seeking and dissipation draw people away from useful and spiritual life. Those already corrupted by solitary vice must flee out of Sodom before sundown lest they be consumed in its iniquity, and placing the glowing horrors and consequences of the sin before them gives strong reason to escape moral defilement at once for benefit and salvation. A land of boasted liberty and advantages will become as Sodom and be consumed the same way when wine-drinking, blaspheming men whose god is money give tone to public opinion and take the lead in the highest circles in the cities, degrading reason, insulting God, and endangering youth. Christ makes the destruction by fire the same day Lot went out a warning for the days of the Son of Man, when eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, and building absorb thought and time to the neglect of eternal interests, a sin that abuses the body, destroys health, unbalances the mind, strengthens animal propensities, and awakens the sword of justice, so His followers must be temperate and seek those things which are above.