Sodom and Gomorrah

Genesis series- Genesis 19:1-38

What are some of the most shocking accounts of sin recorded in the Bible?

Immediately- Judas betraying Jesus.

Adam and Eve eating the forbidden Fruit Cain murdering Abel Saul rejecting God’s Commands David and Bathsheba Jonah running from God

But there is perhaps no more glaring tale of sin in the Bible than this multilayered account of what was happening in Sodom and Gomorrah. And that makes it an excellent backdrop for displaying the judgment of God against sin while tempering it with news of the deliverance of Lot and his family.

In Genesis 18.

God reveals to Abraham that Sodom and Gomorrah are to be destroyed for their grave sins (18:20).

Abraham pleads for the lives of any righteous people living there, especially the lives of his nephew, Lot, and his family.

Whats interesting about Lot, him being in Sodom is a picture of falling into sin.

When he, his family, and workers departed from Moses; moses let him pick which area he wanted. He picked living near Sodom and Gomorrah.

Every time you see Lot from the moment forward, he is getting closer and closer to Sodom.

He lives near Sodom, He is at the gate of Sodom, and then he is in Sodom.

And now God says he is going to destroy Sodom and Gomorroah because their sin is too great.

Abraham seems to negotiate with God on behalf of the righteous in the two cities.

God first agrees to spare the cities if 50 righteous people can be found and eventually agrees to spare them if 10 righteous people can be found (18:23–32).

Genesis 19 (ESV)

1 The two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them and bowed himself with his face to the earth

2 and said, “My lords, please turn aside to your servant’s house and spend the night and wash your feet. Then you may rise up early and go on your way.” They said, “No; we will spend the night in the town square.”

3 But he pressed them strongly; so they turned aside to him and entered his house. And he made them a feast and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.

4 But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man, surrounded the house.

5 And they called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may know them.”

6 Lot went out to the men at the entrance, shut the door after him,

7 and said, “I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly.

8 Behold, I have two daughters who have not known any man. Let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please. Only do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof.”

9 But they said, “Stand back!” And they said, “This fellow came to sojourn, and he has become the judge! Now we will deal worse with you than with them.” Then they pressed hard against the man Lot, and drew near to break the door down.

10 But the men reached out their hands and brought Lot into the house with them and shut the door.

11 And they struck with blindness the men who were at the entrance of the house, both small and great, so that they wore themselves out groping for the door.

12 Then the men said to Lot, “Have you anyone else here? Sons-in-law, sons, daughters, or anyone you have in the city, bring them out of the place.

13 For we are about to destroy this place, because the outcry against its people has become great before the Lord, and the Lord has sent us to destroy it.”

14 So Lot went out and said to his sons-in-law, who were to marry his daughters, “Up! Get out of this place, for the Lord is about to destroy the city.” But he seemed to his sons-in-law to be jesting.

15 As morning dawned, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Up! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be swept away in the punishment of the city.”

16 But he lingered. So the men seized him and his wife and his two daughters by the hand, the Lord being merciful to him, and they brought him out and set him outside the city.

17 And as they brought them out, one said, “Escape for your life. Do not look back or stop anywhere in the valley. Escape to the hills, lest you be swept away.”

18 And Lot said to them, “Oh, no, my lords.

19 Behold, your servant has found favor in your sight, and you have shown me great kindness in saving my life. But I cannot escape to the hills, lest the disaster overtake me and I die.

20 Behold, this city is near enough to flee to, and it is a little one. Let me escape there—is it not a little one?—and my life will be saved!”

21 He said to him, “Behold, I grant you this favor also, that I will not overthrow the city of which you have spoken.

22 Escape there quickly, for I can do nothing till you arrive there.” Therefore the name of the city was called Zoar.

23 The sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zoar.

24 Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven.

25 And he overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground.

26 But Lot’s wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.

27 And Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord.

28 And he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the valley, and he looked and, behold, the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace.

29 So it was that, when God destroyed the cities of the valley, God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow when he overthrew the cities in which Lot had lived.

30 Now Lot went up out of Zoar and lived in the hills with his two daughters, for he was afraid to live in Zoar. So he lived in a cave with his two daughters.

31 And the firstborn said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is not a man on earth to come in to us after the manner of all the earth.

32 Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve offspring from our father.”

33 So they made their father drink wine that night. And the firstborn went in and lay with her father. He did not know when she lay down or when she arose.

34 The next day, the firstborn said to the younger, “Behold, I lay last night with my father. Let us make him drink wine tonight also. Then you go in and lie with him, that we may preserve offspring from our father.”

35 So they made their father drink wine that night also. And the younger arose and lay with him, and he did not know when she lay down or when she arose.

36 Thus both the daughters of Lot became pregnant by their father.

37 The firstborn bore a son and called his name Moab. He is the father of the Moabites to this day.

38 The younger also bore a son and called his name Ben-ammi. He is the father of the Ammonites to this day.

1. Choosing Compassion Over Corruption

Ge 19:1-11

Abraham’s nephew Lot, sitting nearby, rises and bows in an act of humility that contrasts the pride that permeates the city in which he lives.

Hospitably, he pleads with them to stay at his house and to allow him to care for their needs (v. 3).

Through this act, Lot literally fulfills

Hebrews 13:2 (ESV)

2 Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.

After a feast is served to the guests at Lot’s home, a crowd surrounds it. In fact, the “whole population” of the men of Sodom encompass it (Gen 19:4).

Many of these are no doubt men Lot would recognize.

This universal appearance of the townsmen indicates their total complicity with the evil permeating their city.

All by itself, this suggests the angels will not, in fact, find ten righteous people in Sodom.

Whereas Lot seeks out the travelers to serve them humbly as Abraham did, the men of Sodom seek out these travelers only to violate and use them sexually.

The men’s stated desire to “have sex with them” suggests a nefarious desire for erotic satisfaction (v. 5).

This falls in line with God’s description of Sodom in the book of Ezekiel: “They were haughty and did detestable acts before me” (Ezek 16:50).

Lot’s quick response, “Don’t do this evil, my brothers” (v. 7), suggests this type of behavior is neither new to Lot nor something he condones.

Indeed, Peter explains of Lot, “Day by day, his righteous soul was tormented by the lawless deeds he saw and heard” (2 Pet 2:8).

In other words, the Sodomites’ actions on this night are no surprising departure from their normal behavior.

They are a reflection of a culture that has given itself over to the power of sin.

Tragically, while Lot doesn’t agree to their demands, he doesn’t resist their desires.

Instead, he offers a cowardly, wicked compromise.

Rather than allow his invited guests to be thrown to the mob outside his home, Lot instead proffers his virgin daughters (v. 8).

I imagine there daughters loved hearing this.

Regardless, the offer does nothing to appease the mob, who simply criticizes Lot as being nothing more than an outsider who “came here as an alien” and now is “acting like a judge” before threatening to harm him along with the visitors (v. 9).

This city rejects any outside standard for correcting their conduct, whether from Lot or from the Lord.

We, too, live in a society giving itself over to the power of sin.

How do I know this is so? For one, because it celebrates sexual activity that violates God’s design, and thus the land is filled with the survivors of sexual violence.

How many show up at someone’s digital doorstep through the use of pornography.

Many have become like the men of Sodom yelling, “[S]end them out!” so they can violate strangers via images on the screen.

The spirit of Sodom indeed lives on behind every pornographic Internet search.

That same power of sin holds sway in many of us today. That’s why some of us are enslaved to pornography.

The danger is that you might become like Lot: you have lived in this culture for so long and you have figured out how to hide your sin so well that it is tormenting your righteous soul (2 Pet 2:8).

Yet God in his kindness can save us even from ourselves if we turn to him in faith and repentance.

When, in verses 9–10, the hordes of Sodom press forward to break down the door to Lot’s house, the angels step in and strike all the men with blindness.

First, they were figuratively blind with temptation by their wicked desires.

Now, they are literally blind because of their wicked desires.

The fact that those who were blinded included “both young and old” suggests that this act of judgment and accountability came to all who were involved.

This halts the fulfillment of their wicked desires because now they are “unable to find the entrance” (v. 11).

Despite their blindness, the mob relentlessly seeks to satisfy its wicked desires.

What a trenchant reminder of the strength of the temptations that tug at every human heart throughout history.

What happens to the men of Sodom in this scene parallels Paul’s claim about how Satan blinds people through temptation and sin. He writes,

2 Corinthians 4:4 (ESV)

4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

So, in striking the men blind physically, God is making obvious what is already true of them spiritually.

They live in darkness and they hate the light.

They were corrupt to the core, they hardened their hearts to God.

2. Heeding God's Urgent Call

Ge 19:12-22

Sodom’s sin has reached its day of judgment.

Nevertheless, the patience of God creates an opportunity for rescue before his wrath falls.

The angels warn Lot to gather his family and escape the city (v. 12). And as they do, they at last acknowledge the purpose for their arrival: “[T]he LORD has sent us to destroy” Sodom and Gomorrah (v. 13).

This call to escape near the beginning of the Bible foreshadows similar instructions at its conclusion when the following directions are given in Revelation. The Lord says,

Revelation 18:4 (ESV)

“Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues;

That Lot’s family doesn’t believe what the angels claim is evident in that his sons-in-law “thought he was joking” (Gen 19:14).

It seems that as in the days of the flood, here rescue seems unnecessary to many people until it’s too late to escape.

Amazing in this passage is the fact that despite the urgency of the angels, Lot hesitates to evacuate his family.

The night of the angels’ feast has passed, and though “daybreak” has arrived, Lot must be prompted to move (v. 15).

Why?

It seems that even though he anticipates the impending judgment, it is difficult for him to abandon the familiar and follow God by faith.

So many of us today.... Follow God but don’t

There is, in fact, something about fallen humanity that makes us hesitate to trust in the deliverance of God when it means we must flee the comfort of our sinful surroundings to see it.

Eventually, the angels grab Lot’s hand and bring him and his family outside of the city “because of the LORD’s compassion for him” (v. 16).

Yet rather than running as instructed, Lot attempts to negotiate the terms of God’s mercy.

Instead of escaping to the hills as commanded, he pleads with the angels to allow him to “flee to” a nearby town instead (vv. 18–20).

How often are Christians pulled toward doing the same thing?

We are tempted not only to linger in our sinful surroundings rather than to flee in submission to our Savior but also to negotiate the terms of our surrender to God’s mercy.

The New Testament makes clear that this rescue of Lot is a foretaste of what he does for those of us who are found in Christ.

One beauty of God’s rescue is that he doesn’t just command us to escape judgment on our own.

As with Lot, he takes reluctant people by the hand and patiently guides us out of the zone of judgment because he is merciful to us.

The angels urge Lot and his family, “Don’t look back and don’t stop anywhere on the plain! Run to the mountains, or you will be swept away!” (v. 17; cf. Matt 24:16–18).

Similarly, everyone in Christ is called to not look back or stop during their faith journey (Luke 9:62).

As the apostle Peter writes, if God “rescued righteous Lot,” then that means he “knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment” (2 Pet 2:7–9).

In our compromised culture, we Christians may sometimes identify with Lot, who was surrounded by sin, oppressed, coerced toward compromise, and—barring intervention—doomed to be swept away in judgment along with the wicked.

But the gospel infuses believers with a promise of protection on this point.

The Lord will sustain the godly through their trials.

But he will also hold the unrighteous accountable in judgment, just as he did in Sodom.

3. Understanding Sin's Severe Consequences

Ge 19:23-29

Like the flood of Noah’s day, the judgment against Sodom and Gomorrah follows a pattern for judgment seen throughout the Bible. T

here are several characteristic features of this paradigm.

First, God’s judgment is warranted by sinful rebellion.

Sodom faces judgment because the “outcry against its people is so great before the LORD” due to their sin (v. 13).

Romans 6:23 teaches that “the wages of sin is death.”

And in his justice, God holds humanity accountable for their sin.

This is what happens to the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah, but it is appointed for everyone who is outside of Christ (Heb 9:27).

Second, God’s judgment is carried out by God himself.

As the sun rises heralding the day of judgment,

Genesis 19:24 (ESV)

24 Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven.

This description makes unmistakable the active role God plays in this judgment when it states both that “the LORD … rained sulfur and fire” and that it was “from the LORD.”

God carries out judgment himself, even at the cross of Christ.

He pours out the cup of his wrath on the Son (Isa 51:17; Matt 26:39; Rev 14:9–10).

As a result, God made Jesus,

2 Corinthians 5:21 (ESV)

21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Third, God’s judgment is comprehensive in scope.

No one remaining in these two cities escapes his wrath because only Lot was found to be righteous (see 2 Pet 2:7), and he was taken out.

Because “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23), this judgment is a warning for all sinners who find themselves outside of Christ.

God’s judgment at Sodom, in fact, is often used as a model for future judgment of the wicked (Deut 29:23; Ps 11:6; Isa 13:19).

What happens there is a foretaste of what God will do to the nations in judgment for their sin (Zeph 2:9).

Sodom is even a foretaste of what God will do to his people to bring them to repentance (Amos 4:11).

As Jude 7 points out,

Jude 7 (ESV)

7 just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.

Fourth, God’s judgment is universal in nature.

When God’s judgment comes against Sodom and Gomorrah, it is a complete destruction in which God “demolished these cities, the entire plain, all the inhabitants of the cities, and whatever grew on the ground” (v. 25).

What happens at Sodom is thus a foreshadowing to the pattern of warfare God’s people would carry out against their enemies in the conquest of Canaan, in which Israel is told, “[C]ompletely destroy them. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy” (Deut 7:2).

Problem is they didn’t listen, and because of that sin entered the nation. Judges- Solomon.

The universal nature of God’s judgment, however, helps bring attention to his equally expansive offer of grace.

Jesus himself becomes “the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for those of the whole world” (1 John 2:2).

Fifth, God’s judgment is rooted in his covenant faithfulness.

At Sodom, judgment and mercy meet because of God’s faithfulness to his covenant promises.

Just as God remembered Noah after the judgment of the flood (8:1), so too God “remembered Abraham and brought Lot out of the middle of the upheaval” (19:29).

God fulfills his covenant commitments by preserving the righteous from judgment.

At Calvary, however, Jesus receives God’s judgment on the cross as he takes on the sins of his people.

Nevertheless, on the third day, the Messiah experiences God’s rescue in the resurrection as God vindicates him as the true and faithful son of Abraham who receives the blessings of the covenant.

The shocking thing about the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah is not that God actively holds humanity accountable for their sin through judgment.

The shocking thing is not even that God seems to select Sodom and Gomorrah arbitrarily when there were likely other cities living in debauchery at the time.

Instead, the shocking thing about the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah is that, in his mercy, God has chosen to spare so much of humanity from the same fate, since we all deserve it due to sin.

The destruction of Sodom reminds us of God’s justice in holding people accountable for their sins.

But it also reveals his mercy as he rescues Lot as a foretaste of the covenant faithfulness experienced by all those who unite themselves to Christ by faith.

4. Guarding Against Life’s Pitfalls

Ge 19:30-38

After the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot and his daughters find themselves in a desperate situation.

Even though Lot lobbied for Zoar to be saved so that he could reside there, he is now too “afraid to live” in this small city that was spared (v. 30).

Why? Perhaps he fears another brimstone deluge will strike.

Perhaps he and the girls worry locals will associate them with the incident and do them harm.

While the text does not tell us the answer, it does indicate they prefer living in a cave to staying in Zoar.

Lot’s daughters in particular have endured a tumultuous time.

First, they possibly overheard their father offer them up as sexual objects to the marauding crowd, who were seeking to violate angels.

Second, their future husbands had laughed at Lot’s warning to flee and thus got left behind and destroyed (v. 14).

Third, they left everything they owned to escape their home.

All their friends and neighbors, as well as their father’s livelihood and possessions, were destroyed by sulfuric showers.

And finally, they lost their mother, who turned into a pillar of salt for disobeying God (v. 26).

Now, isolated in a cave with few provisions for the present and no obvious prospects for the future, they grow anxious.

What happens next indicates that even though Lot’s daughters had been taken out of Sodom, the sinful spirit of Sodom had not been taken out of them.

You can take the boy out of Oceanway but you can’t take Oceanway out of the boy.

You can take the girl out of Sodom but you can’t take Sodom out of the girl.

In their despair over finding themselves in such a difficult situation, they make a desperate decision.

Rather than choose to trust their father’s Lord to provide the miracle of life in his own way and timing, they seek to take care of their desires according to their own devices.

They take turns getting Lot drunk and sleeping with him so that they might “preserve [their] father’s line” (v. 35).

This is the low point in the Genesis story.

At work in this disturbing story is a pattern in which people bypass God’s design for producing offspring by pursuing prohibited methods for procreation.

The drift away from sexual expression being limited to only husband and wife shows up in the lives of the patriarchs as they take concubines (16:1–15) and multiple wives (29:30–30:24).

But in Genesis, the matter reaches its lowest point with this act of incestuous sexual violence.

It is a perversion of God’s design for sexuality.

Paul condemns a similar type of sexual anarchy in his first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 5:1).

Nevertheless, Lot’s daughters carry out the same kind of assault on their father that he’d been willing to let the mob do to them.

At first, it seems odd that Lot’s two daughters can’t trust God to provide for their futures.

After all, they have just witnessed the Lord rescue them from the fiery judgment of their own city.

But even though God saved them in the past, they refuse to trust him with their future.

Unfortunately, that same lack of trust in spite of God’s track record of faithfulness shows up repeatedly in the lives of people in the Bible and often shows up in our own decisions as well.

This lack of trust undergirds Israel’s creation of the golden calf (Exod 32), David’s illicit census (2 Sam 24), and Peter’s three denials (Luke 22:54–62).

Doubt drives disobedience.

This story of the illicit actions of Lot’s daughters is not just a random, inconsequential part of the Genesis narrative.

The offspring from this connection in the cave will give rise to two people groups who end up plaguing God’s people in the future.

Moab fathers the Moabites (v. 37), and Ben-ammi becomes the patriarch of the Ammonites (v. 38).

Later, as Israel ventures toward the promised land, God initially protects the land of the Moabites and the Ammonites from their conquest (Deut 2:9, 19), but they are later defeated by David (2 Sam 8:2), and they continued to rebel against Israel (2 Kgs 1:1).

More importantly, however, one illicit offspring conceived in the events of Genesis 19 connects directly to God’s grand story of redemption.

Though brought forth through iniquity, Lot’s son Moab becomes the ancestor to a young woman named Ruth (Ruth 1:4

Ruth 1:4 (ESV)

4 These took Moabite wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. They lived there about ten years,

This Moabite woman faithfully follows the Lord’s will into a relationship with Boaz of Judah and ultimately becomes the great-grandmother of King David (Ruth 4:21–22).

So the rebellion of Lot’s family produces a son, whose clan would eventually raise up a Moabite woman, whose lineage would produce a messianic Son.

That Son would be the one to destroy the power of sinful rebellion that ensnared Lot’s daughters in Genesis 19 and grips each one of us who are outside of Christ.

The cave of Moab’s conception, therefore, points ahead to the tomb of the Messiah’s resurrection.

God works through the brokenness of what happened in the cave to prepare the way for the one who rescues us from our own brokenness.