Genesis 19 Devotional
By Pastor Lawrence

There were hundreds of ancient Canaanite cities in existence in the days of Abraham, but none of their names are as familiar to us today as the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah which are mentioned numerous times both in the Old and the New Testaments as a warning of God’s certain judgment against sin. But what exactly was the sin of the Sodomites? There are many liberal scholars today who will try to tell you that their sin had nothing to do with sexual perversion. For instance, they will quote texts such as Ezekiel 16:49 where the Lord says that the Sodomites “had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and the needy,” as if that was the extent of their sin. But they conveniently omit the following verse that adds: “They were haughty and did an abomination before me. So, I removed them, when I saw it.” The sins mentioned first were not considered abominations, but the last sin, which Ezekiel does not describe in detail because it was so well known to all the Jews, was the abomination of a man lying with another man, as it is described in Leviticus 18:22. The prophet Ezekiel was listing many of the sins of the Sodomites to show how the Israelites had done all these things and more, which is why God’s judgment was coming upon them as well. Ezekiel’s primary message here is that the Israelites have even made the Sodomites appear to be righteous by all the additional abominations that they had committed—a sobering message indeed.

In Isaiah 3:9, another prophet shares that it wasn’t just the sin of homsexuality itself that enflamed God’s wrath but the haughty arrogance with which it was carried out. Again, comparing the sin of Israel with the sin of Sodom, he says, “the look on their faces bears witness against them; they proclaim their sin like Sodom; they do not hide it. Woe to them!” So, the flagrancy of their sin was magnified when they paraded it through the streets without blushing. Like any other sin, the sin of homosexuality is compounded by one’s attitude towards the law and the judgment of God. There is a great difference between the person who hates his sin and the person who is haughty in his sin. Even the person who does not repent of his sin but still seeks to hide it is less abominable in God’s eyes than the person who proclaims it publicly and derides the law of God.

But why is the sin of homosexuality itself abominable in God’s sight? Paul explains that it’s because it goes against the very nature of man being an unnatural act (Romans 1:26-27). As the King James translates “unnatural desire” in Jude 1:7, it is a matter of going after “strange flesh.” But it is not merely something odd, it is a sin against God as the creator who made man in his own image. After creating the man from the dust, he fashioned the woman from his rib and brought them together as one. And just as Jesus rejected divorce as being contrary to the original purpose of marriage in the beginning, so Paul rejects homosexuality as an aberration from the norm. But in that case, homosexual relations are not merely a distortion of marriage between one man and one woman, but a complete denial of God’s order and will.

Of course, having a sinful desire is not the same as acting upon it, although thy are both considered sinful. And we all need to repent of sinful desires throughout our lives. Again, the matter in Sodom was much worse than those merely struggling with sexual desire. In their minds, there was no struggle, for contrary to the law of God and to nature, they sinned boldly and without any fear of God’s judgment. It was not just a couple of young men struggling with sexual sin but an entire society that had given itself over to sexual perversion. In v.4 were told that it was all the men of Sodom, “both young and old, all the people to the last man,” who sought to engage in this abomination surrounding Lot’s house.

And in 2 Peter 1:7 we’re told that Lot was “greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked” in Sodom and “as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard.” Again, the sin had become so prevalent that it was not a matter of two consenting adults engaging in the act in the privacy of their own bedrooms, but the sin was being flaunted in public places causing great distress to the few who actually followed God’s law.

But why was Lot so homophobic? Well, it wasn’t that he was afraid of the men committing such acts, as our culture often thinks, but because he was afraid of the Lord’s judgment upon such acts. Peter tells us in that same passage that by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes, he made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly. And that is exactly what the later prophets had foretold Israel would happen to them to if they didn’t repent. And, surely, the same truth applies to our particular nation today. There are many sins that are committed every day in the United States, but the fact that our nation now prominently parades its sins in the streets for months at a time is surely concerning. What is worse is that our country now seeks to force this same abominable ideology upon all the nations of the world.

Surely, this ought to be distressing to righteous men and women today, yet it ought also to encourage us to warn others of the judgment to come knowing that the sexually immoral will not inherit the kingdom of God. Even more so, it behooves us to tell others about the good news of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross for all types of sin, including homosexuality and every other form of sexual immorality. “Such were some of you,” Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:11, “but you were washed, sanctified and justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of God.” It’s not too late to save our towns. Even if the Lord finds just ten righteous men living in a city, he will not destroy it for the sake of the few. As you know, we have many more than ten. So, may the Lord turn our hearts to prayer, interceding for our towns and for the boldness to tell others the good news about Jesus. Who knows whether He will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him.