Lot's Family Flees Sodom as His Wife Turns to Saltby DabarAdoni
19:23Genesis 19:23
The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered into Zoar.
The sun had risen upon the earth on the morning of Sodom's destruction when Lot entered into Zoar, just before judgment fell. That morning was bright and calm with the appearance of prosperity and peace and active life, until destruction broke suddenly and unexpectedly on the same day. Lot had to be hurried because he moved unwillingly and too slowly, distrusting God and pleading to remain in Zoar instead of fleeing to the mountains as commanded, and his delay cost his wife's life when she looked back and became a pillar of salt. Zoar was spared in answer to his request and the storm of judgment was briefly delayed, yet he was barely saved with his life-work lost and all but himself with his wife and two daughters consumed. The sudden ruin of a city given over to pride, idleness, licentiousness, violence and contempt of God stands as a fearful warning to the last days, when the world is fast becoming as Sodom and as it was before the Flood, and as a call to put moral and religious influences first in choosing a home and to flee corrupting company.
Sunrise Flight to Zoar
The sun being risen marks Lot's entry into Zoar at sunrise on the morning Sodom was destroyed, just before judgment fell. It was the close of his flight from Sodom after the angels hurried him and his family away, and the storm of divine judgment was held back only briefly until he was inside. That escape shows a man saved only narrowly with his life-work lost through choosing to live amid moral corruption to the ruin of possessions and family, with wife and married children perishing, while sinful practices taught from one to another had risen until the city's sins reached heaven. His arrival therefore belongs to an account of fleeing a corrupting environment where obedience even at great cost is best, though familiar habits may cling afterward, and where pride, abundance, idleness and neglect of the poor ripened into ruin.
That morning was bright and calm with the look of prosperity and peace. Active life had begun in the streets, with men going to business and pleasure, and Lot's sons-in-law mocking his warning and his faith as weakness before they perished with the city. On that same day destruction broke suddenly and unexpectedly like thunder from a clear sky, with fire and brimstone rained from heaven consuming the cities, the plain, palaces, temples, homes, gardens, vineyards and pleasure-seeking crowds. Smoke went up like a great furnace and the vale of Siddim was left a desolation never to be rebuilt, in dreadful judgment to rid the earth of contaminating influence after lightness and frivolity had degenerated into debasing sins of selfish indulgence where inclination and passion ruled over reason, self was god, the knowledge of God was nearly obliterated, and eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting and building occupied thought to the neglect of eternal interests.
Zoar itself was spared from destruction in answer to Lot's request to take refuge there instead of fleeing to the mountains as commanded. The delay of wrath was only brief, and he afterward did not dare remain in Zoar because wickedness had spread there too.
He had to be hurried because he moved unwillingly and too slowly, and his lingering was connected with his wife remaining behind and becoming a pillar of salt. Only a few escaped though they had been warned, for mercy ceased to plead with the guilty inhabitants and all but Lot with his wife and two daughters were consumed by fire sent down from heaven. In this Lot was spared while the disobedient inhabitants were punished, showing that warnings sent in mercy cannot be rejected without punishment.
Sodom's Corruption and Judgment
Sodom stands as a warning example of a world given over to sin and lacking the safeguards of virtue. It was a wicked and corrupt place of deeply corrupt morals and extreme moral corruption. Its inhabitants were marked by licentiousness and by want of strict purity and carnality, warning that immoral conduct brings people under God's judgment.
Its ruin followed pride, fullness of abundance, idleness, and neglect of the poor. It was a society marked by depravity, cruelty, violence, and crime. Its people corrupted their way by following the imaginations of their own corrupt minds and dishonoring God by wicked inventions, becoming corrupt in body and soul and hating God. They were so steeped by indulgence in licentiousness and destructive lusts that they could not discern between the pure affections and attributes of human nature given by God and sinful lust. They were as sinful as those before the Flood, and God destroyed them because of their wicked works.
Their course degenerated from lightness and frivolity to debasing sins of selfish indulgence of corrupt passions. Inclination and passion bore sway over reason, self was their god, and the knowledge of the Most High was nearly obliterated, while eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, and building occupied thoughts and time at the neglect of eternal interests. They walked in the imaginations of their own hearts in headstrong, independent, wicked lives of impurity and crime that could not be perpetuated. They cast aside God's law and restraint, and their pollution shows the corruption that follows such casting aside. Their destruction was for the same crime found among the Canaanites, communion with evil spirits with its corrupt practices. They show the corrupt and God-forgetting condition reached when wealthy, wine-drinking blasphemers give tone to public opinion and take the lead in the highest circles.
Sinful practices spread as inhabitants taught them to others, until the city's sins reached heaven and God destroyed it. The surrounding cities were also corrupted by the sins of Sodom's people. That wickedness provides the comparison for the moral corruption of modern cities, where widespread pleasure-seeking and dissipation weaken spiritual life and lead away from useful living.
Fire and brimstone rained from heaven, consuming the cities and the plain, palaces, temples, homes, gardens, vineyards, and pleasure-seeking crowds. Messengers of wrath poured forth fiery blasts to blot out its entrancing beauty, making bleak and bare a place God had once made very beautiful. Smoke went up like a great furnace, and the vale of Siddim was left a desolation never to be rebuilt.
The destruction proves that God means what He says when He threatens judgment. Warnings sent in mercy cannot be rejected without punishment, for in the time of Abraham mercy ceased to plead with the guilty inhabitants and all but Lot with his wife and two daughters were consumed by fire from heaven. Though God abundantly blesses and is full of compassion, ready to pardon and heal the bruised and smitten and going forth to meet the returning prodigal, in mercy He acts in vengeance against persistent, independent despisers of His grace. While His mercy bears long with transgressors there is a limit beyond which sin cannot continue, and when that limit is reached mercy is withdrawn, His Spirit is withdrawn, and judgment begins.
Lot's Reluctance and Loss
Lot would not go all the way to the mountains as he had been commanded but pleaded to be allowed to stop short, and that pleading showed distrust of God with faith and confidence in His justice weakened by long dwelling in wicked Sodom. Living there had blunted his perceptions so that he could not discern God's workings and purposes and could not commit himself into God's hands in full obedience. He kept pleading for himself from fear that evil would overtake him and he would die if he obeyed completely, and his delay in escaping cost his wife her life. She looked back murmuring against God and was turned into a pillar of salt, to stand as a warning against disregarding God's special mercies. After that judgment Lot no longer dared to linger but fled to the mountains as directed.
He had entered Sodom intending to keep himself free from iniquity and to command his household after him, but he failed signally in that purpose. The corrupting influences around him weakened his own faith, and his children's ties with the people of Sodom bound up his interests with theirs, so that his children were ruined while he himself barely saved his own soul. His life-work was lost and his life was a sad failure. His choice to live amid moral corruption brought ruin upon his possessions and his family, and though he escaped the city he was saved only narrowly while his wife and some of his children perished. He went into Sodom rich and came out with nothing, led out by an angel's hand as judgment was about to fall, losing wife and married children and riches.
In choosing a home moral and religious influences must be put first of all, above temporal advantage and greater prosperity and a beautiful and fertile country or a flourishing city. To place self and family of choice in an atmosphere of worldliness and unbelief, lax morality, indifference to religious things, rebellion against parental and divine authority, temptation, and attachments unfavorable to piety and right character counteracts parental influence and ruins children, displeases God, and drives holy angels from the home. To gain worldly wealth and honor at the cost of eternal interests is a terrible loss, and where duty calls, watching and prayer with trust in the grace of Christ can keep one uncorrupted, but unfavorable influences must never be needlessly chosen. He warned his daughters and his sons-in-law, but they mocked his faith and perished with the city.
Sodom was moral pollution whose atmosphere and associations were dangerous to one weak in moral power, yet Lot stood uncorrupted in the midst of it. To flee such a Sodom is to obey the voice of God, while to refuse to flee and to carry along unsubdued appetite and passions keeps God from prospering and blessing. To make a home again in Sodom without standing uncorrupted as Lot stood requires repentance with confession and forsaking of sins, the aroused will relying wholly on the strength of Jesus to become an overcomer, and entire separation from corrupting associates whatever the consequences.
Warning for the Last Days
The sudden overthrow gives a fearful warning reaching to the present time that a society sunk in moral corruption faces destruction. The morning Lot entered Zoar at sunrise was bright and calm with an appearance of prosperity and peace. Active life had begun in the streets, with men going to business and pleasure and Lot's sons-in-law mocking warning as weakness. Then on that same day destruction broke suddenly and unexpectedly, like thunder from a clear sky, with brimstone and fire rained from heaven consuming the cities and the plain, palaces and temples, homes and gardens, vineyards and pleasure-seeking crowds. Smoke went up like a great furnace and the vale of Siddim was left a desolation never to be rebuilt. While mercy bears long with transgressors there is a limit beyond which sin cannot continue, and when that limit is reached mercy is withdrawn, God's Spirit is withdrawn, and judgment begins.
The course of the cities of the plain degenerated from lightness and frivolity to debasing sins of selfish indulgence of corrupt passions. Inclination and passion bore sway over reason, self was their god, and the knowledge of the Most High was nearly obliterated, with eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, and building occupying thoughts and time at the neglect of eternal interests. Their destruction was wrath in dreadful judgment to rid the earth of the curse of contaminating influence. As it was in the days of Lot so shall it be in the days of the Son of Man, when gratification of appetite, intemperance, and bewitching infatuation over marriage abuse the body, destroy health, unbalance the mind, strengthen animal propensities, sear the conscience, and awaken the sword of justice. Christ's followers in that time will be temperate and will seek those things which are above.
Sodom stands with Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit that opened the floodgates of woe, with the flood that destroyed the world saving only Noah and his sons, and with Nineveh whose threatened destruction was averted by repentance but later came when sin reached to heaven, as examples of sin steadily increasing until destruction comes. It proves God means what He says when He threatens judgment. The present world is fast becoming as it was before the flood and may again become as wicked and licentious as Sodom and Gomorrah. Indeed it is becoming a second Sodom and Gomorrah in the same evils, marked by want of strict purity and carnality, with men and women professing godliness yet sold unto sin and practicing adultery.
The inhabitants of Sodom walked in the imaginations of their own hearts in headstrong, independent, wicked lives of impurity and crime that could not be perpetuated. Though abundantly blessing and full of compassion and ready to pardon and heal the bruised and smitten, going forth to meet the returning prodigal, God in mercy acts as a God of vengeance against persistent, independent despisers of His grace. Their guilt and fate stands as the condition and end of those now on the borders of the heavenly Canaan who with all advantages, light, and evidences of truth fail to purify their souls by living up to them.
Large cities becoming as Sodom and Gomorrah while the world grows worse and worse is a sign of the times that must be discerned. Discerning it means not moving without the counsel of God and not making large plants or establishing business interests in cities like Melbourne, but living outside them.
Faithful Remnant in Cities
The sunrise entry into Zoar belongs to the escape from Sodom that holds up Lot as one who lived amid a corrupt society while remaining distinct from its wickedness. His arrival at Zoar at sunrise as the destruction unfolded gives the pattern for faithful people still living in sinful cities. There are Lots in every Sodom, meaning that morally corrupt cities contain people like Lot. They are persons living amid a deeply sinful society yet not absorbed by it.
Sodom was indeed a wicked city, as the whole course from Genesis 19:1-29 shows, yet God had His servant Lot in it. That fact means the most wicked cities still contain people who belong to God. They thirst for pure truth as the hart pants for water. For their sake a wicked city must be entered and worked, even a place like New York.
Choosing Home and Company
In choosing a home moral and religious influences must be considered first of all, above temporal advantages, greater prosperity, outward appearance, a beautiful and fertile country, or a flourishing city. Lot chose his residence without reference to his associations, looking only at outward appearance and advantage, and those who believe must not choose where to live as Lot chose. Beautiful surroundings and fertile land cannot make a place safe or desirable when its people reject purity, truth, and righteousness.
Voluntarily placing self and family in an atmosphere of worldliness and unbelief, lax morality, indifference to religious things, rebellion against parental and divine authority, temptation, and associations and attachments unfavorable to piety and right character counteracts parental influence and ruins children. Such a choice displeases God and drives holy angels from the home, and securing worldly wealth and honor at the expense of eternal interests is a terrible loss ending with life-work lost and life a sad failure. Remaining long among the wicked leaves even the rescued barely saved with themselves and their children morally corrupted, so there must be full separation from influences calculated to lead away from God.
Lot's escape as he entered Zoar at sunrise is an example of saving life by fleeing a corrupting environment, though familiar habits and customs may cling even after leaving it. Worldly advantages are not worth losing Jesus or dishonoring God, and obedience is best even at great cost. Fleeing Sodom is obeying the voice of God, while refusing to flee and carrying unsubdued appetite and passions prevents God from prospering and blessing. Making a home again in Sodom without standing uncorrupted requires repentance, confession and forsaking of sins, arousing the will in reliance wholly on the strength of Jesus to become an overcomer, and separating entirely from corrupting associates whatever the consequences.
The account warns youth to guard their senses, associations, and work, and to keep as far from corrupt practices as possible. Bringing young people into close association with worldly people of all grades, high and low, as Lot brought his family into Sodom, exposes them to danger and is contrary to God's will. Calling youth to live, study, and train among such company instead of in some other place apart from it is of that same character. Where duty calls, watching and praying and trusting in the grace of Christ enables standing uncorrupted, but unfavorable influences must not be needlessly chosen.
The sun had risen upon the earth on the morning of Sodom's destruction when Lot entered into Zoar, just before judgment fell. That morning was bright and calm with the appearance of prosperity and peace and active life, until destruction broke suddenly and unexpectedly on the same day. Lot had to be hurried because he moved unwillingly and too slowly, distrusting God and pleading to remain in Zoar instead of fleeing to the mountains as commanded, and his delay cost his wife's life when she looked back and became a pillar of salt. Zoar was spared in answer to his request and the storm of judgment was briefly delayed, yet he was barely saved with his life-work lost and all but himself with his wife and two daughters consumed. The sudden ruin of a city given over to pride, idleness, licentiousness, violence and contempt of God stands as a fearful warning to the last days, when the world is fast becoming as Sodom and as it was before the Flood, and as a call to put moral and religious influences first in choosing a home and to flee corrupting company.
Sunrise Flight to Zoar
The sun being risen marks Lot's entry into Zoar at sunrise on the morning Sodom was destroyed, just before judgment fell. It was the close of his flight from Sodom after the angels hurried him and his family away, and the storm of divine judgment was held back only briefly until he was inside. That escape shows a man saved only narrowly with his life-work lost through choosing to live amid moral corruption to the ruin of possessions and family, with wife and married children perishing, while sinful practices taught from one to another had risen until the city's sins reached heaven. His arrival therefore belongs to an account of fleeing a corrupting environment where obedience even at great cost is best, though familiar habits may cling afterward, and where pride, abundance, idleness and neglect of the poor ripened into ruin.
That morning was bright and calm with the look of prosperity and peace. Active life had begun in the streets, with men going to business and pleasure, and Lot's sons-in-law mocking his warning and his faith as weakness before they perished with the city. On that same day destruction broke suddenly and unexpectedly like thunder from a clear sky, with fire and brimstone rained from heaven consuming the cities, the plain, palaces, temples, homes, gardens, vineyards and pleasure-seeking crowds. Smoke went up like a great furnace and the vale of Siddim was left a desolation never to be rebuilt, in dreadful judgment to rid the earth of contaminating influence after lightness and frivolity had degenerated into debasing sins of selfish indulgence where inclination and passion ruled over reason, self was god, the knowledge of God was nearly obliterated, and eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting and building occupied thought to the neglect of eternal interests.
Zoar itself was spared from destruction in answer to Lot's request to take refuge there instead of fleeing to the mountains as commanded. The delay of wrath was only brief, and he afterward did not dare remain in Zoar because wickedness had spread there too.
He had to be hurried because he moved unwillingly and too slowly, and his lingering was connected with his wife remaining behind and becoming a pillar of salt. Only a few escaped though they had been warned, for mercy ceased to plead with the guilty inhabitants and all but Lot with his wife and two daughters were consumed by fire sent down from heaven. In this Lot was spared while the disobedient inhabitants were punished, showing that warnings sent in mercy cannot be rejected without punishment.
Sodom's Corruption and Judgment
Sodom stands as a warning example of a world given over to sin and lacking the safeguards of virtue. It was a wicked and corrupt place of deeply corrupt morals and extreme moral corruption. Its inhabitants were marked by licentiousness and by want of strict purity and carnality, warning that immoral conduct brings people under God's judgment.
Its ruin followed pride, fullness of abundance, idleness, and neglect of the poor. It was a society marked by depravity, cruelty, violence, and crime. Its people corrupted their way by following the imaginations of their own corrupt minds and dishonoring God by wicked inventions, becoming corrupt in body and soul and hating God. They were so steeped by indulgence in licentiousness and destructive lusts that they could not discern between the pure affections and attributes of human nature given by God and sinful lust. They were as sinful as those before the Flood, and God destroyed them because of their wicked works.
Their course degenerated from lightness and frivolity to debasing sins of selfish indulgence of corrupt passions. Inclination and passion bore sway over reason, self was their god, and the knowledge of the Most High was nearly obliterated, while eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, and building occupied thoughts and time at the neglect of eternal interests. They walked in the imaginations of their own hearts in headstrong, independent, wicked lives of impurity and crime that could not be perpetuated. They cast aside God's law and restraint, and their pollution shows the corruption that follows such casting aside. Their destruction was for the same crime found among the Canaanites, communion with evil spirits with its corrupt practices. They show the corrupt and God-forgetting condition reached when wealthy, wine-drinking blasphemers give tone to public opinion and take the lead in the highest circles.
Sinful practices spread as inhabitants taught them to others, until the city's sins reached heaven and God destroyed it. The surrounding cities were also corrupted by the sins of Sodom's people. That wickedness provides the comparison for the moral corruption of modern cities, where widespread pleasure-seeking and dissipation weaken spiritual life and lead away from useful living.
Fire and brimstone rained from heaven, consuming the cities and the plain, palaces, temples, homes, gardens, vineyards, and pleasure-seeking crowds. Messengers of wrath poured forth fiery blasts to blot out its entrancing beauty, making bleak and bare a place God had once made very beautiful. Smoke went up like a great furnace, and the vale of Siddim was left a desolation never to be rebuilt.
The destruction proves that God means what He says when He threatens judgment. Warnings sent in mercy cannot be rejected without punishment, for in the time of Abraham mercy ceased to plead with the guilty inhabitants and all but Lot with his wife and two daughters were consumed by fire from heaven. Though God abundantly blesses and is full of compassion, ready to pardon and heal the bruised and smitten and going forth to meet the returning prodigal, in mercy He acts in vengeance against persistent, independent despisers of His grace. While His mercy bears long with transgressors there is a limit beyond which sin cannot continue, and when that limit is reached mercy is withdrawn, His Spirit is withdrawn, and judgment begins.
Lot's Reluctance and Loss
Lot would not go all the way to the mountains as he had been commanded but pleaded to be allowed to stop short, and that pleading showed distrust of God with faith and confidence in His justice weakened by long dwelling in wicked Sodom. Living there had blunted his perceptions so that he could not discern God's workings and purposes and could not commit himself into God's hands in full obedience. He kept pleading for himself from fear that evil would overtake him and he would die if he obeyed completely, and his delay in escaping cost his wife her life. She looked back murmuring against God and was turned into a pillar of salt, to stand as a warning against disregarding God's special mercies. After that judgment Lot no longer dared to linger but fled to the mountains as directed.
He had entered Sodom intending to keep himself free from iniquity and to command his household after him, but he failed signally in that purpose. The corrupting influences around him weakened his own faith, and his children's ties with the people of Sodom bound up his interests with theirs, so that his children were ruined while he himself barely saved his own soul. His life-work was lost and his life was a sad failure. His choice to live amid moral corruption brought ruin upon his possessions and his family, and though he escaped the city he was saved only narrowly while his wife and some of his children perished. He went into Sodom rich and came out with nothing, led out by an angel's hand as judgment was about to fall, losing wife and married children and riches.
In choosing a home moral and religious influences must be put first of all, above temporal advantage and greater prosperity and a beautiful and fertile country or a flourishing city. To place self and family of choice in an atmosphere of worldliness and unbelief, lax morality, indifference to religious things, rebellion against parental and divine authority, temptation, and attachments unfavorable to piety and right character counteracts parental influence and ruins children, displeases God, and drives holy angels from the home. To gain worldly wealth and honor at the cost of eternal interests is a terrible loss, and where duty calls, watching and prayer with trust in the grace of Christ can keep one uncorrupted, but unfavorable influences must never be needlessly chosen. He warned his daughters and his sons-in-law, but they mocked his faith and perished with the city.
Sodom was moral pollution whose atmosphere and associations were dangerous to one weak in moral power, yet Lot stood uncorrupted in the midst of it. To flee such a Sodom is to obey the voice of God, while to refuse to flee and to carry along unsubdued appetite and passions keeps God from prospering and blessing. To make a home again in Sodom without standing uncorrupted as Lot stood requires repentance with confession and forsaking of sins, the aroused will relying wholly on the strength of Jesus to become an overcomer, and entire separation from corrupting associates whatever the consequences.
Warning for the Last Days
The sudden overthrow gives a fearful warning reaching to the present time that a society sunk in moral corruption faces destruction. The morning Lot entered Zoar at sunrise was bright and calm with an appearance of prosperity and peace. Active life had begun in the streets, with men going to business and pleasure and Lot's sons-in-law mocking warning as weakness. Then on that same day destruction broke suddenly and unexpectedly, like thunder from a clear sky, with brimstone and fire rained from heaven consuming the cities and the plain, palaces and temples, homes and gardens, vineyards and pleasure-seeking crowds. Smoke went up like a great furnace and the vale of Siddim was left a desolation never to be rebuilt. While mercy bears long with transgressors there is a limit beyond which sin cannot continue, and when that limit is reached mercy is withdrawn, God's Spirit is withdrawn, and judgment begins.
The course of the cities of the plain degenerated from lightness and frivolity to debasing sins of selfish indulgence of corrupt passions. Inclination and passion bore sway over reason, self was their god, and the knowledge of the Most High was nearly obliterated, with eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, and building occupying thoughts and time at the neglect of eternal interests. Their destruction was wrath in dreadful judgment to rid the earth of the curse of contaminating influence. As it was in the days of Lot so shall it be in the days of the Son of Man, when gratification of appetite, intemperance, and bewitching infatuation over marriage abuse the body, destroy health, unbalance the mind, strengthen animal propensities, sear the conscience, and awaken the sword of justice. Christ's followers in that time will be temperate and will seek those things which are above.
Sodom stands with Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit that opened the floodgates of woe, with the flood that destroyed the world saving only Noah and his sons, and with Nineveh whose threatened destruction was averted by repentance but later came when sin reached to heaven, as examples of sin steadily increasing until destruction comes. It proves God means what He says when He threatens judgment. The present world is fast becoming as it was before the flood and may again become as wicked and licentious as Sodom and Gomorrah. Indeed it is becoming a second Sodom and Gomorrah in the same evils, marked by want of strict purity and carnality, with men and women professing godliness yet sold unto sin and practicing adultery.
The inhabitants of Sodom walked in the imaginations of their own hearts in headstrong, independent, wicked lives of impurity and crime that could not be perpetuated. Though abundantly blessing and full of compassion and ready to pardon and heal the bruised and smitten, going forth to meet the returning prodigal, God in mercy acts as a God of vengeance against persistent, independent despisers of His grace. Their guilt and fate stands as the condition and end of those now on the borders of the heavenly Canaan who with all advantages, light, and evidences of truth fail to purify their souls by living up to them.
Large cities becoming as Sodom and Gomorrah while the world grows worse and worse is a sign of the times that must be discerned. Discerning it means not moving without the counsel of God and not making large plants or establishing business interests in cities like Melbourne, but living outside them.
Faithful Remnant in Cities
The sunrise entry into Zoar belongs to the escape from Sodom that holds up Lot as one who lived amid a corrupt society while remaining distinct from its wickedness. His arrival at Zoar at sunrise as the destruction unfolded gives the pattern for faithful people still living in sinful cities. There are Lots in every Sodom, meaning that morally corrupt cities contain people like Lot. They are persons living amid a deeply sinful society yet not absorbed by it.
Sodom was indeed a wicked city, as the whole course from Genesis 19:1-29 shows, yet God had His servant Lot in it. That fact means the most wicked cities still contain people who belong to God. They thirst for pure truth as the hart pants for water. For their sake a wicked city must be entered and worked, even a place like New York.
Choosing Home and Company
In choosing a home moral and religious influences must be considered first of all, above temporal advantages, greater prosperity, outward appearance, a beautiful and fertile country, or a flourishing city. Lot chose his residence without reference to his associations, looking only at outward appearance and advantage, and those who believe must not choose where to live as Lot chose. Beautiful surroundings and fertile land cannot make a place safe or desirable when its people reject purity, truth, and righteousness.
Voluntarily placing self and family in an atmosphere of worldliness and unbelief, lax morality, indifference to religious things, rebellion against parental and divine authority, temptation, and associations and attachments unfavorable to piety and right character counteracts parental influence and ruins children. Such a choice displeases God and drives holy angels from the home, and securing worldly wealth and honor at the expense of eternal interests is a terrible loss ending with life-work lost and life a sad failure. Remaining long among the wicked leaves even the rescued barely saved with themselves and their children morally corrupted, so there must be full separation from influences calculated to lead away from God.
Lot's escape as he entered Zoar at sunrise is an example of saving life by fleeing a corrupting environment, though familiar habits and customs may cling even after leaving it. Worldly advantages are not worth losing Jesus or dishonoring God, and obedience is best even at great cost. Fleeing Sodom is obeying the voice of God, while refusing to flee and carrying unsubdued appetite and passions prevents God from prospering and blessing. Making a home again in Sodom without standing uncorrupted requires repentance, confession and forsaking of sins, arousing the will in reliance wholly on the strength of Jesus to become an overcomer, and separating entirely from corrupting associates whatever the consequences.
The account warns youth to guard their senses, associations, and work, and to keep as far from corrupt practices as possible. Bringing young people into close association with worldly people of all grades, high and low, as Lot brought his family into Sodom, exposes them to danger and is contrary to God's will. Calling youth to live, study, and train among such company instead of in some other place apart from it is of that same character. Where duty calls, watching and praying and trusting in the grace of Christ enables standing uncorrupted, but unfavorable influences must not be needlessly chosen.