Fire from Heaven: Genesis 19:1-29

The two angels arrived at Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gateway of the city.

The gateway—the place of commerce and judgment, where elders sat and decisions were made. Lot had risen in Sodom. The tent-dweller had become a city official.

When he saw them, he got up to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground. "My lords," he said, "please turn aside to your servant's house. You can wash your feet and spend the night and then go on your way early in the morning."

"No," they answered, "we will spend the night in the square."

They knew what kind of city this was. Strangers in the square would face Sodom's hospitality.

But he insisted so strongly that they did go with him and entered his house.

Lot knew too. Whatever he had become in this city, he had not forgotten basic decency. The visitors must not stay outside.

Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house. They called to Lot, "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them."

All the men. Young and old. Every part of the city. This was not a criminal minority—this was a culture. The mob did not want hospitality; they wanted violence.

Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him and said, "No, my friends. Don't do this wicked thing."

What followed was Lot's desperate, depraved attempt at a solution—offering his own virgin daughters to the mob. The text records it without comment, letting the horror speak for itself. Even Lot had been corrupted by Sodom.

The men of Sodom threatened to treat Lot worse than the visitors. They pressed toward the door.

But the men inside reached out and pulled Lot back into the house and shut the door. Then they struck the men who were at the door of the house, young and old, with blindness so that they could not find the door.

Blindness did not stop them. The text says they wearied themselves trying to find the door—even blind, they kept groping for entrance. The depravity was that deep.

The two men said to Lot, "Do you have anyone else here—sons-in-law, sons or daughters, or anyone else in the city who belongs to you? Get them out of here, because we are going to destroy this place."

Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who were pledged to marry his daughters. "Hurry and get out of this place, because the LORD is about to destroy the city!" But his sons-in-law thought he was joking.

They laughed. Years of living in Sodom, and Lot had no credibility. His warning sounded like a joke.

With the coming of dawn, the angels urged Lot, saying, "Hurry! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be swept away when the city is punished."

When he hesitated, the men grasped his hand and the hands of his wife and of his two daughters and led them safely out of the city, for the LORD was merciful to them.

Hesitated. Even now, with angels dragging him toward the door, Lot hesitated. The city had sunk its hooks deep.

As soon as they had brought them out, one of them said, "Flee for your lives! Don't look back, and don't stop anywhere in the plain! Flee to the mountains or you will be swept away!"

Don't look back. Simple instructions. Clear boundaries. Everything behind them was about to cease to exist.

By the time Lot reached Zoar, the sun had risen over the land. Then the LORD rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the LORD out of the heavens.

Fire from heaven. Brimstone falling like rain. The cities that had reached up in wickedness now received judgment pouring down. The smoke rose like smoke from a furnace.

But Lot's wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.

She looked back. One glance. One longing. One moment of turning toward what had been home. And she became a monument to disobedience—a salt pillar in the wasteland where cities had stood.

Early the next morning Abraham got up and returned to the place where he had stood before the LORD. He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, toward all the land of the plain, and he saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace.

From the heights near Mamre, Abraham watched the smoke rise. His intercession had not saved the cities. But his nephew—dragged out by angels, minus a wife turned to salt—had survived.

So when God destroyed the cities of the plain, he remembered Abraham, and he brought Lot out of the catastrophe.

God remembered Abraham. The intercession had not been wasted. The prayer had not been unheard. Even when judgment fell, mercy rode alongside, pulling the hesitant to safety.