In chapter 18 we began at noon; now it is evening of the same day, as two angels, appearing as men, go in at the gate of Sodom. There in the gate sits Lot, like one of the principle men of the city, and from what we read in the ninth verse, I think it was what he wanted to be. Just as courteous as his uncle, Abraham, Lot meets these two strangers with an invitation to his house for the night. The Lord has been in Sodom this afternoon, and the angels too, no doubt, but no one saw them, and He has gone back to the sky, leaving the angels behind, for they have work to do to-night and to-morrow.
The Lord had visited Abraham, sat under his shade tree, eaten his food, and talked with him this afternoon, but does He call on Lot in the city down in the beautiful valley? No, Lot, though one of His children, was too much at home in the world. What was the angels’ answer to Lot’s invitation? “Nay, hut we will abide in the street all night.” How different from the answer to Abraham in chapter 18, verse 5, “So do, as thou hast said.”
This gives us something to think about, doesn’t it? At one man’s home, God would stop and talk face to face as to a friend, but at another’s, who was as surely going to be in that heavenly home in the sky as Abraham was, even His angel said, “Nay, but we will abide in the street all night.”
I want my home to be of the Abraham kind, and not like Lot’s that even angels didn’t want to go into, don’t you, too?
Let us be much in prayer, desiring to be pleasing to God, not just while we are in Sunday school, and in meetings of the Lord’s people, but in our ways and our words at home, at day school and wherever we may be. God knows what sort of people we are, whether anyone else does or not.
The angels were persuaded by Lot to go to his house, and they ate the meal he had prepared, but we can’t help noticing that not a word is told us of the conversation at the table. I think those angels didn’t feel very much at home in Lot’s house.
Presently a great crowd of men from all over the city came to the house, shouting out to Lot to bring out the two men he had taken in for the night. How ashamed and grieved Lot must have felt as he went to the door, that his guests should know that Sodom had such people in it. If this chapter tells us all that Lot said to the crowd when he went outside, and shut the door behind him so the angels shouldn’t hear, he knew it was of no use to politely ask those lawless men to go quietly away, for they would not listen to anything, but started to break in the door. Nov the angels opened the door, drew Lot in and shut it again, and smote all the crowd with blindness, so as I suppose they soon began to go away from Lot’s house.
Lot knew quite well that Sodom was a very wicked place, but it seems to me pretty sure that he had not been trying very much to find out what God would have him to do, or where He wanted him to be because then, I think, he would not have ever gone into, or even near Sodom to live, neither would he have been trying to make Sodom, or the world better, as he appears to have been doing.
God, long, long afterwards, in 2 Peter 2:6-8,6And turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha into ashes condemned them with an overthrow, making them an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly; 7And delivered just Lot, vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked: 8(For that righteous man dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds;) (2 Peter 2:6‑8) has told us how Lot felt while he was in Sodom, but I suppose he wasn’t any real testimony in the place. The wicked men, when they surrounded his house that night, didn’t say,
“He’s been telling us about God, and a day of judgment,” no, they as much as said, “He came in to stay just a little while, and now he wants to be a judge.”
Perhaps someone will say, “But the world isn’t as bad now as Sodom was in Lot’s time.” Well if you mean that there are laws now, and prisons and policemen, and so on, and we don’t often hear about such wicked deeds, I agree with you, but it isn’t just because people are afraid they will be sent to prison, or hanged, or put to death in the electric chair that there isn’t so much open wickedness. Let God give us the explanation: we shall find it in Second Thessalonians 2:7, where He tells us that there is One who restrains or holds back the tide of evil until He be taken out of the way. That person is the Holy Spirit, and when the Lord Jesus comes in the air, and calls away all those who are saved, to go with Him to His heavenly home, the Holy Spirit will go too. We must not forget that however peaceful and quiet it may seem in our part of the world now, the whole world has been charged by God with the rejection of His Son. If you, my reader, have not received Jesus as your personal Saviour, you are going to have a harder judgment than the people of Sodom will have. Just open your Bible at Matthew 11:20-24,20Then began he to upbraid the cities wherein most of his mighty works were done, because they repented not: 21Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. 22But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment, than for you. 23And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. 24But I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee. (Matthew 11:20‑24) and see that Jesus’ coming into the world has made a great difference as God sees things.
The angels now said why they were there (verse 12), and Lot was told that if he had anyone outside of his home that he cared for,. they must be brought out of Sodom, so he must have said to himself, these men are angels, and the city is going to be destroyed at once! Whatever might have been true of him before, there was no time now to be lost, and Lot set out to visit his married daughters’ homes, but their husbands only laughed at him, and the daughters evidently decided to stay with them; if they had children, they stayed too, because Lot went home alone. We are not told anything about Lot’s wife, except that she looked behind when they left the city, and judgment fell on her then.
After thinking about it a long time, I have concluded that Lot’s wife was a woman of Sodom, and not a believer, and’ that the family couldn’t have been brought up in the fear of God..
We are sure that what God said about Abraham, in chapter 18, verse 19, could not have been said of Lot, and I am afraid that Lot had not been faithful to the men who had married his daughters, either. Perhaps we had better not say more, when God says little, but it certainly is sad to see Lot going back alone, and to think of those he loved and warned of the judgment, being swallowed up in that terrible destruction the next morning.
As the dawn appeared early the next morning, the angels told Lot to take his dear ones, his wife and his two daughters, that were in the house, out of the city at once, but the poor man could hardly make up his mind to go. I suppose all his treasures were in Sodom, and it was pretty hard for him to leave.
The angels had to take each one of the four people by the hand and lead them out of Sodom. Now escape, they said, for your very lives; don’t look behind, or stay in the plain, but go quickly to the mountain, lest you be consumed in the destruction.
Poor Lot was afraid to go to the mountain, and begged to be allowed to make his home in the little town of Zoar, but when he got there his fear moved him to go on to the mountain after all.
As soon as Lot got into Zoar, a terrible storm of Sulphur and fire came down from God, and utterly destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, with their people and everything that grew there. Today there is the Dead Sea where that beautiful valley lay; no fish can live in its waters, and nothing grows near its shores, so travelers to Palestine tell us.
Lot’s wife looked back; her heart was in that city, and she died looking back, and was changed to a pillar of salt.
Now I am going to stop, but first I want you to open your Bible at one of the very shortest verses. It has just three words in it. It is Luke 17:32,32Remember Lot's wife. (Luke 17:32) but read all the verses from the 26th to the end of the chapter, for there the Lord Jesus is comparing Noah’s day and Lot’s day with what is coming on the earth.
Here too is a key verse for what we have been thinking about today.
“Remember Lot’s wife.”