1.Cities and countries suffer for the evil of the inhabitants. Carnal men are usually moved by carnal arguments, and tremble more to hear of the loss of their estates than of their souls; we are startled to hear of scarcity, and famine, and fires, and pestilences; all these are the fruits of sin.
2. Those cities were utterly destroyed, and accordingly is the destruction of Sodom put for an utter overthrow (Isa_13:19; Zep_2:9; Jer_48:18; Jer_50:40; 2Pe_2:6). Observe thence, that in judgments wicked men may be brought to an utter destruction. The synagogue of Satan may be utterly destroyed, but not the city of God; in the saddest miseries there is hope of God’s children.
3. Fellowship in evil can neither excuse sin nor keep off wrath. It cannot excuse sin; nothing more usual than for men to say, they do as others do; if you do as others do you shall suffer as others do; example doth not lessen sin, but increase it, partly because their own act is an approbation of the act of others. Again, it doth not keep off wrath; multitudes and single persons are all one to avenging justice. Well, then, learn to live by rule and not by example, and propose the sins of others to your grief, not imitation: “Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but reprove them rather”; their practice will never afford you excuse nor exemption. To walk with God is praiseworthy, though none do it besides thyself; and to walk with men in the way of sin is dangerous, though millions do it besides thee.
4. The lesser cities imitated the greater. Admah and Zeboim followed the example of Sodom and Gomorrah. An error in the first concoction is seldom mended in the second. When the first sheet is done off, others are printed by the same stamps. Diodorus Siculus telleth us of a people in Ethiopia, that if their kings halted, they would maim themselves that they might halt likewise. The vices of them in place and power are authorised by their example and pass for virtues; if they be slight in the use of ordinances, it will be taken up as a piece of religion by inferiors to be so too.
5. From the first crime here specified, giving themselves over to fornication, that adulterous uncleanness doth much displease God. When they were given over to fornication they were given over to judgment.
(1) This is a sin that doth not only defile the soul but the body (1Co_6:18). It is a wrong to the body, considered either as our “vessel” (1Th_4:4), or as “the temple of the Holy Ghost” (1Co_6:19). If you consider it as our vessel or instrument for natural uses, you wrong it by uncleanness--namely, as it destroyeth the health of the body, quencheth the vigour of it, and blasteth the beauty, and so it is self-murder. If you consider it as the temple of the Holy Ghost, it is a dishonour to the body to make it a channel for lust to pass through. Shall we make a sty of a temple?
(2) It brawneth the soul; the softness of all sensual pleasures hardeneth the heart, but this sin, being the consummate act of sensuality, much more (Hos_4:11).
(3) Next to the body and soul there is the name, now it blotteth the name (Pro_6:33).
(4) It blasteth the estate (Heb_13:4). God will judge others, but surely these, and that remarkably in this life.
(5) This doth exceedingly pervert the order of human societies; Solomon maketh it worse than theft (Pro_6:29-32).
(6) It is a sin usually accompanied with impenitency--namely, as it weareth out remorse and every spark of good conscience (Pro_22:14; Pro_2:19; Ecc_7:26-28). Beware of all tendings that way; do not soak and steep the soul in pleasures. Guard the senses, cut off the provisions of the flesh, avoid occasions, be employed.
6. Again, from the other sin, and going after strange flesh, observe, sin is never at a stay; first, uncleanness, and then given over to uncleanness, and then strange flesh. When a stone runneth down hill it stayeth not till it cometh to the bottom.
7. The wicked Sodomites were not only burnt up by that temporal judgment, but cast into hell, which is here called “eternal fire.” The scourges of conscience that we meet with here are too great price for the short pleasures of a brutish lust, much more “the worm that never dieth, the fire that shall never be quenched.”
8. There is one note more, and that is from that clause, “are set forth for an example.” Observe thence, that Sodom’s destruction is the world’s great example. You will say, What have we to do with Sodom, their sins being so unnatural, their judgments so unusual?
(1) As to their sins, I inquire, Are there none of Sodom’s sins amongst us? If not “going after strange flesh,” yet “fornication”; if not fornication, yet “pride and idleness and fulness of bread”? We sin against more light, more love, etc.
(2) As to the judgments, though God doth not nowadays smite a country with judgments immediately from heaven, yet His displeasure is no less against sin; and if not the same, a like judgment, one very grievous, may come upon us. (T. Manton.)
The extermination of sin
I. God’s hatred of sin demonstrated by the destruction of sinners. The punishment of evil-doers forms a large portion of the sacred volume. Sin is never unpunished if not pardoned. This is a beneficent as well as just treatment. The safety of moral beings is thereby secured.
II. National sins visited by universal destruction.
III. Sin must be exterminated. God does destroy sin by reconstructing, and He reconstructs the order of society by destroying.
IV. The warning is the strongest. (T. Davies, D. D.)
