And said, I pray you, brethren, do not so wickedly.
Lot stood at his door calling the men of Sodom brethren as neighbors, urging them to turn from their vile intent to abuse his guests, but they mocked him, grew more enraged, and pressed forward with violence until angels struck them blind and drew Lot to safety. The wickedness he condemned was shameless sexual impurity and lawless lust, the same abomination that brought fire and brimstone from heaven to rid the earth of its curse. That corruption had grown from idleness, pride, fullness of bread, neglect of the poor, and casting off God's law and restraint until appetite ruled mind and conscience and defiance passed the limits of forbearance. His plea warns that cities and the world now are becoming another Sodom through the same licentiousness and moral corruption, calling all to seek the Lord earnestly, watch and pray, and separate entirely from its evil associations. In choosing a home moral and religious influences must come first, for Lot chose by outward advantage and lost all but his barely saved soul, showing none should choose as he chose.
Lot's Plea in Context
He called the men of Sodom brethren in the sense of neighbors, seeking to win them over and to shame them into abandoning their vile purpose. His appeal that they not act so wickedly was an effort at persuasion and conciliation, urging them to feel shame and turn from what they intended. The plea failed, for instead of yielding they mocked and threatened him, their rage increased, and they pressed on with violence.
Angels came to the gates of Sodom on a mission of mercy to rescue righteous Lot from the fiery doom appointed for the city. They came as holy ministering spirits sent to a child of God, an example of how such ministry has been given to God's people in all ages. The inhabitants meant to abuse the visitors staying with Lot, but the angels protected him from the mob by striking them with blindness so that they could not find the door. Having thus shielded him, they led him safely out of the city before its destruction.
Sodom's Corrupting Wickedness
The wickedness Lot condemned was extreme sexual licentiousness and impurity, including the intent to abuse his visitors, the same abomination for which Sodom was destroyed and for which the Canaanites were judged. It was so wicked and licentious that he rebuked and pleaded against it, and the same corrupting power seeks through Satan to make the world as licentious, requiring watchfulness and prayer to resist evil desires and temptation. Society becomes a Sodom at large when the God-given distinction between man and woman is erased. God made the race male and female as complements on the principle of division of labor, with differences from head to foot in body and in mind and heart, and ordained a universal and unmistakable distinction in dress to go with the wearer as a perpetual restraining monitor, a preventive police more effective than laws, courts, and officers. Casting that distinction aside evidences guilty intent, and any woman who practices, palliates, or tolerates it is traitorous to the virtue of both sexes and worthy of legal penalties and the ridicule and scorn of the community.
Becoming like the Sodomites includes young women making advances to young men and young men flirting with young women, seeking each other's society, exchanging notes in worship, common cheap talk and ways, and breaking down all barriers of reserve and true decorum. Such behavior in professed Christians and professed Sabbath-keepers is offensive to God, destitute of Christlike humility and elevation of character and destitute of the Spirit of God, controlled by Satan, a mockery of the Christian name and perversity of character that misapplies powers and perverts privileges and opportunities. Unless moral taste is refined and Christ becomes an abiding principle in the soul, those who practice it will lose their souls and never see heaven, and with great light disobeyed will bring God's terrible judgments in righteousness as the end is near. The same wickedness is paralleled by sexual practices in marriage that follow the example of the Sodomites. Lot's condemnation also applies to sexual abuse and corrupting the young as grave moral defilement, an abomination before God and the practice of iniquity that spreads as people teach it to others until it brings judgment.
Sodom's impurity appears as want of strict purity and carnal living, being sold unto sin and practicing adultery by men and women professing godliness, a condition now so widespread that the world is becoming a second Sodom and Gomorrah. It shows what a land of liberty and advantage becomes when open wine-drinking, blasphemy, contempt for God, and wild license give tone to public opinion and lead in the highest circles of society where money is god. That corruption grew from idleness joined with pride, fullness of bread, abundance of idleness, and failure to strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. Idleness brings vice and crime in its train, giving Satan success in idle hours to surprise the unguarded with temptation under attractive disguise, with terrible results in enfeebling the mind, debasing the soul, and perverting the understanding. It came from training youth to be idle instead of diligent, to love excitement, to glorify themselves, and to follow the imagination of their own evil hearts, without education to diligent habits, while idle holidays believed essential to health and happiness are full of evil ruining the country, and the same training in cities and even country towns now is making them become like Sodom and Gomorrah and like the world in the days of Noah, producing depravity, cruelty, violence, and crime with the same result.
The cities of the plain degenerated from lightness and frivolity to corrupt passions bearing sway over reason, making self their god and nearly obliterating the knowledge of God through selfish indulgence. Appetite ruled mind and conscience in gluttony, drink, lustful abomination, and absorption in eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, building, courtship and marriage, with human feelings, desires and passions bearing down everything and God not consulted. This came by casting aside God's law and restraint and rejecting His commandments through selfish indulgence and neglected moral education, which polluted and corrupted Sodom like the world in Noah's day and shows what society becomes around Lot's home when iniquity is fostered. That contaminating influence called forth the wrath of God in fire and brimstone destruction that rid the earth of their curse, warning that the same indulgence in the days of the Son of Man, neglecting eternal interests and abusing the body, will be punished.
Sodom's corruption was bold and defiant licentiousness, impurity and crime, walking in the imaginations of their own hearts in headstrong, independent, persistent despising of grace. It had become so deep that the city had passed the limits of divine forbearance and faced judgment, having destroyed themselves in body and soul so that God could not perpetuate their lives. It corrupted body and soul, spread as people taught it to others, became a byword for extreme moral depravity like the people before the Flood, and brought God's message of destruction. In mercy He proved Himself a God of vengeance with the harshest punishment, though He abundantly blesses and is full of compassion, ready to pardon and meet the returning prodigal and heal the bruised and smitten, and 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 fail to purify their souls by living up to them.
Judgment and Deliverance
Sodom was destroyed by bolts of fire from heaven, in fire and brimstone that rid the earth of its curse. The history to which the plea against wickedness belongs shows sin steadily increasing after the fall and the flood, with men not learning that God means what He says. God does not spare people from the consequences of transgressing His requirements, punishing disobedience while saving Lot.
Though many were warned, only a few were saved. The cities of the plain had degenerated from lightness and frivolity until corrupt passions ruled reason, self became their god, appetite ruled mind and conscience in gluttony, drink, lustful abomination, and absorption in eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, building, courtship and marriage without consulting God, nearly obliterating the knowledge of God through selfish indulgence. That contaminating influence called forth wrath in destruction, warning that the same indulgence in the days of the Son of Man, neglecting eternal interests and abusing the body, will be punished.
Choosing Home Wisely
Lot chose his home by outward appearance and temporal advantage, looking on beautiful country, fertile land, a flourishing city, greater prosperity, and the prospect of worldly wealth and honor, without reference to its moral and religious associations. Man looks at outward advantage while God looks at the heart, and evil associations of irreligious, self-indulgent character mold and undermine principles approved by God and are detrimental to piety and devotion. None should choose as Lot chose, for his later flight and warning to his family expose the danger of choosing for natural advantages without considering morals and religion.
He entered Sodom wealthy and intending to keep himself free from iniquity and to command his household after him, yet his very presence there proved his signal failure. 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. He went in 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, leaving bleak and bare a place God had once made very beautiful. His children were ruined and he barely saved his own soul, so that securing worldly wealth and honor at the expense of eternal interests made his life-work lost, a sad failure and terrible loss of the immortal inheritance.
Voluntarily placing oneself and family in an atmosphere of worldliness, unbelief, lax morality, indifference to religious things, temptation, and evil associations to gain temporal advantage displeases God, drives holy angels from the home, counteracts parental influence, and ruins the piety and character of children. It exposes youth to temptation, unfavorable associations, and rebellion against parental and divine authority, and exposure to corrupt practices can stain the soul. In choosing a home moral and religious influences must come first for formation of Christian character and piety and a title to the immortal inheritance, and unfavorable influences must not be needlessly courted. Youth must be guarded in surroundings, associations, and work and kept as far from Sodom as possible, young people must not be called to places like Battle Creek and placed among people of every worldly class, and God's institutions such as a sanitarium must not be placed in wicked surroundings, for that would be like Lot going into Sodom. Wherever duty calls, watchful prayerful trust in the grace of Christ will enable one to stand uncorrupted.
Lot stood uncorrupted amid Sodom's moral pollution, pleading against wickedness instead of joining it. Sodom means a place with a dangerous moral atmosphere where association endangers one who is weak in moral power and carries unsubdued appetite and passions, yet even corrupt places can have people who stand for what is right. Fleeing Sodom means obeying the voice of God to leave such a place and separating entirely from the class associated with it. As God had Lot in great and wicked Sodom, so He has a people in great and wicked cities like New York who as the hart pants after the water brooks are panting after pure truth, so that city is ready to be worked and the power of God is to carry the truth there. Lot pictures righteous people still found in every sinful place, and his stand calls for reformers who defend the law God established to govern the physical system, who keep an elevated standard in training the mind and culturing the heart, and who join the Great Physician in a work of mercy and necessity to battle disease and relieve suffering by showing the value of nature's remedies.
Warning for Present Time
Lot's plea not to act wickedly makes Sodom a picture of present cities and towns steeped in sin and moral corruption and given over to wickedness. Excitement and pleasure draw people from duty into dissipation in those cities, which are growing increasingly wicked. The corrupt morals confronted there warn of a society dangerous to young people when wickedness and lack of self-restraint prevail. Through licentiousness and moral corruption the world is becoming another Sodom, like the world in Noah's day.
The account in Genesis 18-19 to which the plea belongs calls hearers to seek the Lord most earnestly and to take a more decided stand. They are to be not only professional believers in the truth but obedient to all of God's requirements, with confession of sin and earnest prayer, and with the Spirit softening and subduing hearts to make the word effectual in reaching them. Since the inhabitants Lot rebuked and pleaded with were so wicked and licentious, watchfulness and prayer are needed to resist evil desires and temptation, lest Satan make the world as licentious as its people.
The wickedness Lot pleaded against was bold and defiant licentiousness, impurity and crime, walking in the imaginations of their own hearts in headstrong, independent, persistent despising of grace. It was such that God could not perpetuate their lives, and in mercy He proved Himself a God of vengeance with the harshest punishment. Yet He abundantly blesses and is full of compassion, ready to pardon and to meet the returning prodigal and to heal the bruised and smitten. 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 fail to purify their souls by living up to them.
Lot stood at his door calling the men of Sodom brethren as neighbors, urging them to turn from their vile intent to abuse his guests, but they mocked him, grew more enraged, and pressed forward with violence until angels struck them blind and drew Lot to safety. The wickedness he condemned was shameless sexual impurity and lawless lust, the same abomination that brought fire and brimstone from heaven to rid the earth of its curse. That corruption had grown from idleness, pride, fullness of bread, neglect of the poor, and casting off God's law and restraint until appetite ruled mind and conscience and defiance passed the limits of forbearance. His plea warns that cities and the world now are becoming another Sodom through the same licentiousness and moral corruption, calling all to seek the Lord earnestly, watch and pray, and separate entirely from its evil associations. In choosing a home moral and religious influences must come first, for Lot chose by outward advantage and lost all but his barely saved soul, showing none should choose as he chose.
Lot's Plea in Context
He called the men of Sodom brethren in the sense of neighbors, seeking to win them over and to shame them into abandoning their vile purpose. His appeal that they not act so wickedly was an effort at persuasion and conciliation, urging them to feel shame and turn from what they intended. The plea failed, for instead of yielding they mocked and threatened him, their rage increased, and they pressed on with violence.
Angels came to the gates of Sodom on a mission of mercy to rescue righteous Lot from the fiery doom appointed for the city. They came as holy ministering spirits sent to a child of God, an example of how such ministry has been given to God's people in all ages. The inhabitants meant to abuse the visitors staying with Lot, but the angels protected him from the mob by striking them with blindness so that they could not find the door. Having thus shielded him, they led him safely out of the city before its destruction.
Sodom's Corrupting Wickedness
The wickedness Lot condemned was extreme sexual licentiousness and impurity, including the intent to abuse his visitors, the same abomination for which Sodom was destroyed and for which the Canaanites were judged. It was so wicked and licentious that he rebuked and pleaded against it, and the same corrupting power seeks through Satan to make the world as licentious, requiring watchfulness and prayer to resist evil desires and temptation. Society becomes a Sodom at large when the God-given distinction between man and woman is erased. God made the race male and female as complements on the principle of division of labor, with differences from head to foot in body and in mind and heart, and ordained a universal and unmistakable distinction in dress to go with the wearer as a perpetual restraining monitor, a preventive police more effective than laws, courts, and officers. Casting that distinction aside evidences guilty intent, and any woman who practices, palliates, or tolerates it is traitorous to the virtue of both sexes and worthy of legal penalties and the ridicule and scorn of the community.
Becoming like the Sodomites includes young women making advances to young men and young men flirting with young women, seeking each other's society, exchanging notes in worship, common cheap talk and ways, and breaking down all barriers of reserve and true decorum. Such behavior in professed Christians and professed Sabbath-keepers is offensive to God, destitute of Christlike humility and elevation of character and destitute of the Spirit of God, controlled by Satan, a mockery of the Christian name and perversity of character that misapplies powers and perverts privileges and opportunities. Unless moral taste is refined and Christ becomes an abiding principle in the soul, those who practice it will lose their souls and never see heaven, and with great light disobeyed will bring God's terrible judgments in righteousness as the end is near. The same wickedness is paralleled by sexual practices in marriage that follow the example of the Sodomites. Lot's condemnation also applies to sexual abuse and corrupting the young as grave moral defilement, an abomination before God and the practice of iniquity that spreads as people teach it to others until it brings judgment.
Sodom's impurity appears as want of strict purity and carnal living, being sold unto sin and practicing adultery by men and women professing godliness, a condition now so widespread that the world is becoming a second Sodom and Gomorrah. It shows what a land of liberty and advantage becomes when open wine-drinking, blasphemy, contempt for God, and wild license give tone to public opinion and lead in the highest circles of society where money is god. That corruption grew from idleness joined with pride, fullness of bread, abundance of idleness, and failure to strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. Idleness brings vice and crime in its train, giving Satan success in idle hours to surprise the unguarded with temptation under attractive disguise, with terrible results in enfeebling the mind, debasing the soul, and perverting the understanding. It came from training youth to be idle instead of diligent, to love excitement, to glorify themselves, and to follow the imagination of their own evil hearts, without education to diligent habits, while idle holidays believed essential to health and happiness are full of evil ruining the country, and the same training in cities and even country towns now is making them become like Sodom and Gomorrah and like the world in the days of Noah, producing depravity, cruelty, violence, and crime with the same result.
The cities of the plain degenerated from lightness and frivolity to corrupt passions bearing sway over reason, making self their god and nearly obliterating the knowledge of God through selfish indulgence. Appetite ruled mind and conscience in gluttony, drink, lustful abomination, and absorption in eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, building, courtship and marriage, with human feelings, desires and passions bearing down everything and God not consulted. This came by casting aside God's law and restraint and rejecting His commandments through selfish indulgence and neglected moral education, which polluted and corrupted Sodom like the world in Noah's day and shows what society becomes around Lot's home when iniquity is fostered. That contaminating influence called forth the wrath of God in fire and brimstone destruction that rid the earth of their curse, warning that the same indulgence in the days of the Son of Man, neglecting eternal interests and abusing the body, will be punished.
Sodom's corruption was bold and defiant licentiousness, impurity and crime, walking in the imaginations of their own hearts in headstrong, independent, persistent despising of grace. It had become so deep that the city had passed the limits of divine forbearance and faced judgment, having destroyed themselves in body and soul so that God could not perpetuate their lives. It corrupted body and soul, spread as people taught it to others, became a byword for extreme moral depravity like the people before the Flood, and brought God's message of destruction. In mercy He proved Himself a God of vengeance with the harshest punishment, though He abundantly blesses and is full of compassion, ready to pardon and meet the returning prodigal and heal the bruised and smitten, and 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 fail to purify their souls by living up to them.
Judgment and Deliverance
Sodom was destroyed by bolts of fire from heaven, in fire and brimstone that rid the earth of its curse. The history to which the plea against wickedness belongs shows sin steadily increasing after the fall and the flood, with men not learning that God means what He says. God does not spare people from the consequences of transgressing His requirements, punishing disobedience while saving Lot.
Though many were warned, only a few were saved. The cities of the plain had degenerated from lightness and frivolity until corrupt passions ruled reason, self became their god, appetite ruled mind and conscience in gluttony, drink, lustful abomination, and absorption in eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, building, courtship and marriage without consulting God, nearly obliterating the knowledge of God through selfish indulgence. That contaminating influence called forth wrath in destruction, warning that the same indulgence in the days of the Son of Man, neglecting eternal interests and abusing the body, will be punished.
Choosing Home Wisely
Lot chose his home by outward appearance and temporal advantage, looking on beautiful country, fertile land, a flourishing city, greater prosperity, and the prospect of worldly wealth and honor, without reference to its moral and religious associations. Man looks at outward advantage while God looks at the heart, and evil associations of irreligious, self-indulgent character mold and undermine principles approved by God and are detrimental to piety and devotion. None should choose as Lot chose, for his later flight and warning to his family expose the danger of choosing for natural advantages without considering morals and religion.
He entered Sodom wealthy and intending to keep himself free from iniquity and to command his household after him, yet his very presence there proved his signal failure. 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. He went in 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, leaving bleak and bare a place God had once made very beautiful. His children were ruined and he barely saved his own soul, so that securing worldly wealth and honor at the expense of eternal interests made his life-work lost, a sad failure and terrible loss of the immortal inheritance.
Voluntarily placing oneself and family in an atmosphere of worldliness, unbelief, lax morality, indifference to religious things, temptation, and evil associations to gain temporal advantage displeases God, drives holy angels from the home, counteracts parental influence, and ruins the piety and character of children. It exposes youth to temptation, unfavorable associations, and rebellion against parental and divine authority, and exposure to corrupt practices can stain the soul. In choosing a home moral and religious influences must come first for formation of Christian character and piety and a title to the immortal inheritance, and unfavorable influences must not be needlessly courted. Youth must be guarded in surroundings, associations, and work and kept as far from Sodom as possible, young people must not be called to places like Battle Creek and placed among people of every worldly class, and God's institutions such as a sanitarium must not be placed in wicked surroundings, for that would be like Lot going into Sodom. Wherever duty calls, watchful prayerful trust in the grace of Christ will enable one to stand uncorrupted.
Lot stood uncorrupted amid Sodom's moral pollution, pleading against wickedness instead of joining it. Sodom means a place with a dangerous moral atmosphere where association endangers one who is weak in moral power and carries unsubdued appetite and passions, yet even corrupt places can have people who stand for what is right. Fleeing Sodom means obeying the voice of God to leave such a place and separating entirely from the class associated with it. As God had Lot in great and wicked Sodom, so He has a people in great and wicked cities like New York who as the hart pants after the water brooks are panting after pure truth, so that city is ready to be worked and the power of God is to carry the truth there. Lot pictures righteous people still found in every sinful place, and his stand calls for reformers who defend the law God established to govern the physical system, who keep an elevated standard in training the mind and culturing the heart, and who join the Great Physician in a work of mercy and necessity to battle disease and relieve suffering by showing the value of nature's remedies.
Warning for Present Time
Lot's plea not to act wickedly makes Sodom a picture of present cities and towns steeped in sin and moral corruption and given over to wickedness. Excitement and pleasure draw people from duty into dissipation in those cities, which are growing increasingly wicked. The corrupt morals confronted there warn of a society dangerous to young people when wickedness and lack of self-restraint prevail. Through licentiousness and moral corruption the world is becoming another Sodom, like the world in Noah's day.
The account in Genesis 18-19 to which the plea belongs calls hearers to seek the Lord most earnestly and to take a more decided stand. They are to be not only professional believers in the truth but obedient to all of God's requirements, with confession of sin and earnest prayer, and with the Spirit softening and subduing hearts to make the word effectual in reaching them. Since the inhabitants Lot rebuked and pleaded with were so wicked and licentious, watchfulness and prayer are needed to resist evil desires and temptation, lest Satan make the world as licentious as its people.
The wickedness Lot pleaded against was bold and defiant licentiousness, impurity and crime, walking in the imaginations of their own hearts in headstrong, independent, persistent despising of grace. It was such that God could not perpetuate their lives, and in mercy He proved Himself a God of vengeance with the harshest punishment. Yet He abundantly blesses and is full of compassion, ready to pardon and to meet the returning prodigal and to heal the bruised and smitten. 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 fail to purify their souls by living up to them.