Fire, Brimstone, and Salt
Sin has a course to run. The very nature of sin is to get worse. It is not abstract or static. The reaction of sin to God is the same as the reaction of darkness to light. There is a recoil. There is a moment of fight or flight. Where sin cannot rally its human troops to cover up the light, it must flee, but whether it is fight or flight, the intensity of its motion will pick up so rapidly that only he who makes a study of sin by God’s word will understand the upheaval.
Genesis 19:1-29 also shows us a grave necessity on God’s side. As sin runs its course, and takes an all the more morally repugnant form, the Bible uses the word “abomination” to describe it. That is because the holiness of God also has a course to run due to sin.
Man’s Defense of Abominable Sin
God’s Wrath against Abominable Sin
Apostasy’s Glance to Abominable Sin
Doctrine. Sin must speed its course and holiness must meet it with fire.
Man’s Defense of Abominable Sin.
Notice in our text that it was a whole city typified by rebellion against God and that the whole city acted as one man against both man and angel.
“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” (v. 4)
If sinners cannot prevail by pretend “polite” measures, their mob will quickly turn violent: ‘And they called to Lot, ‘Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may know them’ (v. 5). I’ll come back to the nature of the sin in a moment, but note the speed, revved up from request to battering ram in two to five seconds:
“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” (v. 9).
So entrenched is this fortress of justifying sin that down to our day, so-called “progressives,” who have slithered into the church, attempt to remove sexual deviancy of any kind from this sin. They will appeal to that passage that says:
“Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty and did an abomination before me. So I removed them, when I saw it” (Ezk. 16:49-50).1
There are four basic problems with the progressive’s use of this passage. First, they ignore the use of the word “abomination” in the last part of that list of sins; second, they even more greatly ignore the figurative way that all of the cities in that context are being used. Sodom was not literally the sister of the southern kingdom. Similarly, notice the present tense call to repentance to “Sodom and Gomorrah” in Isaiah 1:10. Clearly the use of the title is to smear Judah’s face in a notorious historical type—not to re-litigate the literal Sodom’s sin. We can add to this the third difficulty of ignoring other passages. For instance,
“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” (Jude 7).
“if he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked … and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion” (2 Pet. 2:7, 10).
But it is the immediate context which follows that drives the most serious stake into the progressive interpretation. If the violence against the two visitors was not of a sexual nature, why exactly would Lot present his two daughters to be violated in a sexual way as a substitute? Mark his words:
“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” (v. 8).
As if that breaking in to violate God’s people wasn’t enough, observe how their demonic rage stays in motion in spite of their next degree of incapacitation. The angels ‘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’ (v. 11). Put yourself in their shoes for a second. You are reaching desperately to inflict pain. Those who you are reaching for blind you. They obviously have what we would call a “super-power.” You keep raging! Whatever should go off as an alarm in your head does not for them. Sin first blinded them.
This mad rush depicts a universal tendency, as Calvin put it, “So the wicked, after they have long securely exulted in their iniquity, at length, by furiously rushing onward, accelerate their destruction in a moment.”2 A person who has been caught in the grossest perversion, upon being caught, will lash out because his end is upon him.
God’s Wrath against Abominable Sin.
This is a notorious Bible passage in the eyes of the world. Unbelievers have always hated this account for obvious reasons. Certain norms are set forth about God’s judgment against sin: that He has a mission of vengeance, ministers of vengeance, and messengers of vengeance.
First, the mission of God ends, for this age, in wrath. When it comes, it is final and full: ‘Then the LORD rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the LORD out of heaven. And he overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground” (vv. 24-25).
Second, the elect angels are ministers of God’s vengeance,—“So the angel swung his sickle across the earth and gathered the grape harvest of the earth and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God” (Rev. 14:19); and especially on the Day, “when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance” (2 Thess. 1:7-8).
Third, those same angels, being messengers, teach that God sends on mission to warn of His judgment: “Then I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them” (Rev. 8:2); so God’s human messengers are sent with the same—as Jonah “called out, ‘Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” (Jon. 3:4) And so Lot takes part in this, calling their sin acting “wickedly” (v. 7).
As Charnock said, in his discourse on God’s holiness, “There is nothing so contrary to the sinfulness of man as the holiness of God, and nothing is thought of by the sinner with so much detestation.”3 So why the fire, the brimstone, and the salt? There is God’s side—an infinitely weightier necessity, as Charnock continues: “Sin cannot escape a due punishment. A hatred of unrighteousness—and consequently a will to punish it—is as essential to God as a love of righteousness.”4 The Bible makes it plain that, “the LORD will by no means clear the guilty” (Nah. 1:3).
Apostasy’s Glance to Abominable Sin.
Apostasy means a falling away from God: a defection from His kingdom. Not only do the two son-in-laws not take this seriously, but this fog of sin clings so tightly that it would have sunk even this chosen family if they were left to their own devices. You see, after the angels further warning, it says, ‘But he lingered’ (v. 16a). Not everyone can forcibly remove their loved ones as these angels could, but it does remind us that whoever we can still move in this way, we should. But the apostasy from this family is not yet complete.
“But Lot’s wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt” (v. 26).
I do not honestly know why she was turned to salt rather than into something else, or into nothing at all.
Such is the power of darkness over the sin nature in us, that, even though it seems unthinkable to us as readers to look back to such a place, yet, “Like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool who repeats his folly” (Prov. 26:11). This story is not some special circumstance, after all. It is the city we find ourselves in and the righteous wrath that awaits it—only the exact pace of the sands of time may differ. If left to our own devices, we would look back. Our sinful nature misses sin and is in fact already pulling at our soul to look back. This warning is also about current destructions before the final. Again, the Peter verse—“then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment” (2 Pet. 2:9). We don’t often change because we can’t imagine life without the normalized sins of our time and place.
There’s something else here. You can be a part of the spiritual caravan out of Sodom as surely as Lot had already been part of the original caravan out of Ur—and for all of that, not be a regenerated believer. Jesus said, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” (Lk. 9:62). The true believer is defined not so much by what he has left behind as by what is in his eye before him. We are told that Christ will “appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him” (Heb. 9:28). Yes, salvation is out of the city of destruction, but it is a redemption for the city of God. Anyone who sees that cannot help but look forward. And we prevent looking back by feeding our looking forward.
Practical Use of the Doctrine
Use 1. Correction. If Sodom became a type of final Babylon (Rev. 11:8), it was first a stage of the City of God acting in the city of man. Lot stood at the gates. Such gates were the place of the elders of a city.5 That explains some of the resentment of the mob with their words: ‘This fellow came to sojourn, and he has become the judge!’ (v. 9) The world will house a Christian if he promises only to be passing through, but if that pilgrimage includes a word from God’s law, then they are considered as an enemy at the gates. Nevertheless, we are commanded to “reason frankly with your neighbor” (Lev. 19:17), and so Lot did do something right here in calling out: ‘I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly’ (v. 7).
Our call to repentance must concern those most treasured sins.
Our call to repentance must concern those most enslaving sins.
Our call to repentance must concern those most collective sins.
These three go together. The most collective sins are the most treasured. Why else would they be so celebrated? And they are the most enslaving, exerting the most influence over the sinner, being the most unthinkable for him to leave behind.
Use 2. Admonition. That passage from Jude does not only speak of the nature of the sin of those cities but their end. But if we read it carefully, we will see that it speaks not only of an end in a temporal fire, but in an eternal fire. These “serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire” (Jude 7). And again,
“if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly” (2 Pet. 2:6).
The recent wildfires in the so-called “city of angels” gave us all a fresh reminder of the devastating power of fire. We are reminded of this every time there are these massive fires. We will see images of the firefighters heading for refuge under these heat shields made of what looks like aluminum foil, and they will try to place these in an area where they have done controlled burning—that is, a method used to eliminate more flammable timber—so that when the flames become too furious, they can rush to this place where the fire has already fallen and take cover.
The Bible treats God’s wrath as a “fury of fire” (Heb. 10:27) and even God Himself as “a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29). It also treats the cross of Christ as a shelter from the fire of wrath to come. The end of Psalm 2 speaks of Christ in saying “his wrath is quickly kindled” yet ends with the gospel words, “Blessed are all who take refuge in him” (v. 12). Many have scoffed at fire and brimstone, and many more have thought they can stand on their own.
But when your life is over or if the Lord returns—whichever should happen first—and this universe is rolled away like a scroll and its elements are burned by fire; and there is nothing left in between you and your holy Maker, the only place of safety will be to fall down, and take cover, in that place where the fire has already fallen.
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1. Calvin himself put “the sacred right of hospitality” (Commentaries, I:499) at the center of his interpretation; however, his exegetical rationale and motives were so far removed from modern progressivism that a mere mention of it would lend itself to the dishonesty of the hour.
2. Calvin, Commentaries, I:498.
3. Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God, II:1129.
4. Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God, II:1142.
5. Waltke takes this view (Genesis: A Commentary, 275).
