The Guilty Sinner's Doom

In Genesis chapter 19 and in verses 23 through 28 we read, The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered into Zoar. Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven. And he overthrew those cities and all the plain and all the inhabitants of the cities and all that which grew upon the ground.

But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt. 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. Picture that scene in your mind, friends, the old patriarch Abraham, standing on that cliff in the mountain, gazing down below at that terrible scene of ruin, wreckage, destruction, piles upon pile of human carnage, a blackened foot sticking out here and a twisted short arm sticking up there, as plumes of black smoke billow up with the force of a fierce furnace.

Sodom was the scene of the most terrible judgment on human sin, and its glare falls upon the pages of Scripture like a scorching spotlight. God's prophets make mention in reference to this historical catastrophe as Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel apply its truths, and so does Amos and Zephaniah. Jesus spoke of the judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah on more than one occasion.

Paul, Peter, and Jude reference it, and even the last book of the Bible in Revelation, the city of sin, is called Sodom. From Genesis to Revelation, the glare of God's judgment on Sodom burns with intensity through the book of God's holy word as a reminder to all, and a witness to all, that God is a God who must punish sin. And as the story flashes out in vivid destruction, we feel the heat and scorch on our own sinful flesh, that constant barrage of molten fire falling like tons of flame and fiery bricks that gave no relief on the startled inhabitants of the cities of the plains, everywhere the Sodomites turned to flee the fire they were consumed by it.

Every avenue of escape on those smoking city streets was covered and stacked high with smoke and brimstone that glowed with heaven's fiery wrath on sin, until their blackened and charred bodies were buried beneath their hubble, rubble of a smoking conflagration, that went up like a furnace. God's overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah burns still with the smell of sulfur, and its glare is a warning against all sin, as the burning of Sodom is a vivid picture of hell. The Sodomites represent the sinners in hell who are unrepentant, hate all things holy, are rebels against the authority of God Almighty, and the conflagration that fell and rained hell down on Sodom with a mighty fury that consumed every square inch of it is a peek into the outpoured wrath of God on sinners in hell, in their eternal damnation and unenduring suffering and misery, wherein Malachi it is said of God's anger that it's described that it burns as an oven.

The doom of the guilty sinner is hell and its torments. The same force of that overwhelming catastrophe is taking place in hell at this moment, where there is no rest for the wicked, as those burning bricks of brimstone fell with the flash and force of a fallen meteor spitting fire and sparks as it fell to earth that day on wicked Sodom. So do the wicked in hell suffer the same fierceness of his wrath, the indignation of a holy God, as he pours out his wrath and damnation in the place of the guilty sinner's doom, which is hell itself.

You're a haughty rebel. You're a shameless sinner. You despise God's authority.

Why doesn't God turn you into a pillar of salt right now? Why doesn't he cut you down in your rebellion and send you to hell right now? My Bible says, the soul that sinneth, it shall surely die. And in Isaiah, it describes a terrible doom of the guilty sinner. The sinners in Zion are afraid.

Fearfulness has surprised the hypocrites, who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings. Listen to me, friends. The guilty sinner's doom is hell itself, and God demands repentance from you.

You won't let God run your life. You refuse his rule over you. You tell Jesus he cannot rule in your heart when God reproves you for your sins and when his Holy Spirit woos you and knocks on your door, you say, not tonight.

I'm not willing to surrender to Jesus. You know that to be a Christian is to live a holy life, but you love your sins and you love to wallow in your pig pen and worship your idols and spit in the face of a Holy Christ. If the Lord saves you, he will demand perfect obedience from you and holiness unto God and hard obedience to him, but you buck him and fight him and refuse to bow and surrender to him, to that holy sovereign who has rights and claims on all followers of his.

The fierceness of God's oven of flames and hell doesn't bother you because of your hardness of heart and the stiffness of your neck, but mark my words, friends, as I quote God's word, he that being often reproved, hardness of neck, shall suddenly be destroyed and that without remedy, that means without the remedy for sin in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, if you die in your sins, you die as a guilty sinner and you will be sent to your doom in hell's punishment and experience the damnation of hell for all eternity in an oven of heat and flames that will make Sodom look like a picnic. Repent before it's too late and believe on Christ and on him as your Lord.