On the night before Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by fire from the Lord, two men in Sodom were offered the chance to escape the city with their families, and were warned that God intended to destroy those cities. They decided that the message was not serious, and refused to leave. They and their families were destroyed the next day.
Why would anybody turn down a free, no strings attached chance to continue living? Why would anybody choose death over life? Let¹s take a closer look at what happened to these two men, so that we can see why they made the choice they did. Perhaps we can learn how to avoid making the same mistake that they did.
When Abraham came to Canaan in obedience to God¹s call, his nephew, Lot, came with him. Lot endured the same hardships and dangers that Abraham did, faithfully and without complaining. When Abraham became rich, Lot became rich right along with him.
These riches, though caused some new problems. Abraham and Lot now had so many livestock that there wasn¹t grazing room for all of them. Their herdsmen decided to solve their problem ³the old-fashioned way,² and began to fight each other. To put a stop to this, Abraham decided that he and Lot should separate, so that each would have sufficient grazing room.
Being the generous man that he was, Abraham offered Lot his choice of land; Abraham would take what was left. Lot did not pray and ask God for advice on what to do. Instead, he looked both ways to see where the grass was greener, and chose that direction. The land he chose was exceptionally good; in Genesis 13:10 it is compared to the Garden of Eden!
There was only one thing wrong with the land Lot chose: it was close to Sodom. In the beginning, Lot only ³pitched his tent toward Sodom.² but before long, he was a citizen of the city.
Sodom was an exceptionally evil city, but the testimony of scripture is that even living in the midst of Sodom, Lot remained a righteous man.
II Peter 2:6-9.
6 And 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;
7 ¶ And 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;)
9 The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished:
The time finally came when God had had enough of the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah, and decided to destroy them as an example and a warning to others. Before He destroyed those cities, God revealed to Abraham what He was about to do. Abraham pleaded for the cities on the basis of the few righteous people living in them. Because of his plea, God agreed not to destroy the cities if as few as ten righteous people could be found in them.
There weren¹t even that many! In the end, Sodom was destroyed, not because there were too many sinners there, but because there were too few saints!
But before He destroyed those cities, God sent two angels into Sodom to rescue Lot. These angels were disguised as men. They came into Sodom as ordinary travelers, as nobodies. They did not look for Lot. They came to town at evening, which made it pretty clear that they intended to spend the night.
Most towns in those days had a public square in the center of town. Here a traveler could spend the night, if no one was hospitable enough to invite him into his home, and find the basic necessities.
Lot was sitting at the city gate when they came in. He invited them, insistently, to stay at his house for the night, rather than lodge in the square, and they finally accepted. He prepared a feast for them, doing even more than was customary for his guests. Finally, the household prepared to go to sleep for the night.
Before they could do so, they were interrupted by people pounding on the door. All the men of the city had gathered themselves together, intent on raping the two men who had just come into their city.
Lot went out to talk to the men. He pleaded with them not to harm the two men, who he had invited into his house as guests precisely to protect them from something like this. Now, as his guests, they were under the protection of his roof. In the culture he lived in, that meant that he and his family were committed to protect these men even at the cost of their lives.
Lot made it very clear that he intended to live up to his commitment.
Genesis 19:8.
8 Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as [is] good in your eyes: only unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof.
From the vantage point of our culture and our day, what Lot did was unthinkable. He offered these men a whole city full! his own daughters to rape! From our point of view, this seems positively obscene. In the culture Lot lived in, Lot was doing exactly what would be expected of a host under such circumstances.
As a father, Lot was personally responsible for the safety and honor of his two unmarried daughters. If their virginity were lost let alone if they were raped Lot¹s honor was destroyed. Lot was offering the safety and possibly even the lives of his own daughters to protect the strangers he had taken into his own home.
What happened next makes it clear that this was not merely an attempt to protect men at the expense of women, as some have claimed.
Genesis 19:9-10.
9 And they said, Stand back. And they said [again], This one [fellow] came in to sojourn, and he will needs be a judge: now will we deal worse with thee, than with them. And they pressed sore upon the man, [even] Lot, and came near to break the door.
10 But the men put forth their hand, and pulled Lot into the house to them, and shut to the door.
The men of the city rejected Lot¹s offer, and decided instead to rape Lot as well as the two men. As they began to attack, Lot stood his ground. He did not go inside to get his daughters, nor did he retreat into the dubious safety of the house. He stayed outside and prepared for the worst.
Why, then, did he offer his daughters, when he himself was prepared to be raped to protect his guests? Jude provides a clue to the answer.
Jude 7.
7 Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.
Lot was not only trying to protect his guests from rape; he was also trying to minimize the sin of the men of Sodom. The men of Sodom had given themselves over to fornication and ³strange flesh;² Lot was trying to get them to settle, in this instance, for rape and fornication. The implication, as unpopular as it is to modern ears, is that homosexuality is a more serious evil than mere fornication. Rape would have been involved in either event.
Once the men made their choice, however, Lot accepted the consequences. His guests, however, did not. They opened the door, pulled Lot inside, and shut the door, inflicting the men outside with blindness. Sane men would have run home in terror at that point; these men wore themselves out trying to find the door.
Lot had passed two tests he did not even know he was taking. He had gone out of his way to show hospitality to these men in order to protect them from possible harm, then backed up this initial commitment even at the risk of rape and death. Lot had shown himself to be righteous, not only in the privacy of his own home, but when it meant losing everything he had as well. Only then did the two men reveal to Lot that God was about to destroy the cities of the plain, and instruct him to leave with his family to avoid being destroyed.
The offer of deliverance was not extended to Lot only, but to any sons, daughters, and sons-in-law who were in the city. Lot went immediately to speak to his two sons-in-law, the husbands of two of his daughters, to warn them of the destruction to come.
These men were being offered exemption for themselves and their families from the fiery death that was the sentence for everyone else in the condemned cities. They were being given privileged information about God¹s plans and intentions. They were being given a window into the future, a chance to make their plans and decisions in light of a clear knowledge of what was about to happen, and what the consequences of a wrong decision would be.
Lot¹s two sons-in-law decided that Lot was pulling their leg. What he was telling them was the funniest thing they had heard in years. They had absolutely no intention of packing up their families and heading out of town on the basis of a ridiculous story like this.
God tested Lot by sending him two angels disguised as men. He tested Lot¹s sons-in-law by sending them a man to warn them instead of angels. Lot¹s sons-in-law had the right to pass judgment on Lot and his story, and they did. They did not understand, though, that they themselves were on trial, and that in judging against Lot and his story, they were passing judgment against themselves.
Paul and Barnabas, two or three thousand years later, brought a message to the Jews of Antioch in Pisidia. They, too, on the whole, rejected the message given to them.
Acts 13:46.
46 Then Paul and Barnabas waxed bold, and said, It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you: but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles.
Just as the Jews in Antioch, by rejecting the message given them, judged themselves unworthy of everlasting live, so Lot¹s sons-in-law, by rejecting the message given to them, judged themselves unworthy of life. They stayed at home, and Lot had to leave without them. When Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, two of Lot¹s daughters were destroyed in the flames.
What could have caused these men to ignore the life-saving warning they were given, thus condemning themselves and their families to death? Several things contributed to their decision.
God has appointed a message to go around the world today: ³Be ye reconciled unto God.² (II Corinthians 5:18-20).
Acts 17:30-31.
30 And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent:
31 Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by [that] man whom he hath ordained; [whereof] he hath given assurance unto all [men], in that he hath raised him from the dead.
God is testing mankind today the same way He tested Lot¹s sons-in-law. No angel is being sent to men with the message; no voice from heaven, no fiery writing in the sky. Instead, the message comes by way of other men, and is borne witness to by a book that claims to be authored by God Himself.
We have the privilege today of judging for ourselves whether this message is true, or whether these men and this book are ³pulling our leg.² But while we are judging them, it is we ourselves who are on trial. Like the Jews at Antioch of Pisidia, we are passing judgment on whether or not we ourselves are worthy of eternal life.
Let us weigh the evidence of God¹s Word and God¹s message carefully. Let us be as careful about our decision as if our lives were hanging in the balance.
For those of us delivering the message, let us remember that this is not a mere academic exercise, either for us or for the people to whom we are speaking. Peoples¹ lives hang in the balance. Let us speak meekly and with much love, but without compromising the truth of God¹s Word one iota. And let us speak to as many as we possibly can, because some will believe.