Getting Out of Sodom

Years ago, I was on a boat in the Bay of Naples, in Italy, and I could not help staring at Mount Vesuvius with its split peaks of that now dormant volcano. The inhabitants of Pompeii and Herculaneum never had a chance to escape the fury that rained down upon them. It's been estimated that the volcanic eruption spewed forth a deadly cloud of superheated tephra and gases to a height exceeding 21 miles in the air.

The volcano ejected molten rock and ash at a rate of 1.5 million tons per second, and the Mount Vesuvius eruption released 100,000 times the thermal energy of the Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombings. There was no getting out once the fury commenced. There is a biblical equivalent to Mount Vesuvius and the burning of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Turn in your Bibles there now, friends, to Genesis chapter 19, as we look at this account this evening. The title of my message is Getting Out of Sodom. The first category of people I want us to examine are the inhabitants of Sodom.

The Sodomites were intoxicated with their lust for one another, and they were reprobated by God. They'd become so vile and wicked, all God could do was to destroy them. God said to them, because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, this refers to the cry of rape, and because their sin is very grievous, well, their sin was sodomy, as they were homosexuals.

The burning of Sodom was a terrible sight to behold. We have an eyewitness account to the burning of Sodom. In Genesis 19, 27 and 28, we read, And Abraham got up early in the morning to the place where he stood before the Lord.

And he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and lo! The smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace. When I was in high school, I had a summer job at a local grocery store, and one of my tasks was to take the cardboard boxes that the produce came in, and flatten them with a box cutter, stack them on a two-wheeler, and cart them to the back of the store, where there stood a cast-iron furnace, and I had to throw those boxes in there and burn them. And to this day, friends, I can still feel the heat of that furnace as it singed my face from those white-hot flames.

Believe me when I say, friends, the burning of Sodom was sudden and unbearable. Not one Sodomite got out of Sodom. They all perished in that burning inferno.

The second category of persons I want us to examine are the sons-in-law of Lot, for they were warned. We see in verse 14, And Lot went out, and spake unto his sons-in-law, which married his daughters, and said, Up, get ye out of this place, for the Lord will destroy the city. But he seemed as one that mocked unto his sons-in-law.

These two young men were indifferent, but they were also different from the rest of the inhabitants of Sodom, because they were warned of what was to take place. But because of their unbelief, they did not escape the burning of Sodom. They perished in the flames like the wicked Sodomites.

Lastly, the final category of persons is Lot and his family. But they got out of Sodom, because they were dragged out by the angels. And while he lingered, the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the hand of his two daughters, the Lord being merciful unto him.

And they brought him forth, and set him without the city. But they get out of Sodom, but Lot's wife disobeys God's command, and looks over her shoulder at the burning city, and she is immediately turned to a pillar of salt as a testimonial to disobeying God. But Lot and his two daughters escape the catastrophe.

But there still was too much of Sodom in his daughters, as they soon commit incest with their father, and see nothing wrong with it. As we can see, friends, getting out of Sodom was not easy. Perhaps you, friend, are in a Sodom of your own choosing, and you've been lingering there too long, and you think you can continue there in safety, like the verse from Ecclesiastes 8.11, which declares, Listen, friend, where you are, and what you're involved in, you know in your heart it's wrong, because of this, God stands in opposition to you, and his patience is fast running out.

If you don't get out of your Sodom now, you risk never getting out. You will be in too deep. It'll be too late for you then.

Get out while you can, friend. Get out now. You are sitting too close to a volcano, so to speak, and it's getting ready to blow.

But repent before it's too late.