March 25, 2023: 2 Peter 2:6 - We're Ignoring Examples of God's Wrath on the Wicked

“…and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them to destruction, making them an example to those who afterward would live ungodly…” - 2 Peter 2:6

Peter not only gave the example of the angels who sinned and had sexual intercourse with human women and the example of the ungodly world at the time of Noah when God flooded the world, he now also uses Sodom and Gomorrah as an example of when God did not spare people who had become so ungodly that He brought His wrath upon them. The context of this is when Peter was describing the doom of false teachers who “will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their destructive ways, because of whom the way of truth will be blasphemed.” (2 Peter 2:1-2) It is crystal clear that God will not be mocked by these false teachers, and He will “reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment” (2 Peter 2:9) and destroy them, just as He destroyed those who lived in Sodom and Gomorrah.

What were the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah? The book of Genesis, chapter 18:16-33 and chapter 19 tell us, and so do the books of Ezekiel and Jude. It takes a lot for God to send His wrath upon people. He gives us many chances to stop sinning and turn to Him. He also withholds His wrath from the righteous, as He did with Abraham’s nephew and his family. God told Abraham, “Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grave, I will go down now and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry against it that has come to Me; and if not, I will know.” Abraham’s nephew Lot and his family lived in Sodom. Abraham then asked God, “Would You also destroy the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there were fifty righteous within the city; would You also destroy the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous that were in it? Far be it from You to do such a thing as this, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous should be as the wicked; far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” God answered Abraham, “If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes.” Abraham then asked God if He would spare the city if 45, then 40, then 30, then 20, and finally if 10 righteous souls were found, would He not destroy the city. God answered, “I will not destroy it for the sake of ten.” If there were only ten people in Sodom and Gomorrah who were righteous in the eyes of God, He would spare the city and let the people live. However, there were not even ten righteous people in the city.

God sent two angels to go to Sodom and Gomorrah to bring Lot and his family out of the city before He would send His wrath upon it. In the Bible, angels are always represents in the masculine form, including Michael and Gabriel, and are referred to as “he.” They went to Lot’s house. He invited them in and said they could wash their feet, spend the night, and then get up early the next morning and be on their way. But they told Lot they would spend the night in the open square. Lot, however, knowing the sins and depravity of the people in the city, strongly insisted they come into his house, and they did. Before going to bed, “The men of the city, the men of Sodom, both old and young, all the people from every quarter surrounded the house. And they called to Lot and said to him, ‘Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may know them carnally [to have sex with them].’” Lot interceded for the angels and said that the men could have his two virgin daughters instead, but the old and young men of the city pushed against Lot and tried to break down the door. However, the angels pulled Lot out of their hands, pulled him into the house, and shut the door. The angels then blinded all the men outside the door so that they could not continue in their attempts to get the angels.

The angels told Lot they were there take him and his family out of Sodom because God had sent them to destroy the city. Lot told his family, including his two sons-in-law, to get out of Sodom. However, his sons-in-law thought he was joking and did not leave with him. Early the next morning, the angels told Lot to hurry and take his family and leave but Lot was lingering. The angels literally took Lot and his family by their hands and brought them outside of the city. Then they told them, “Escape for your life! Do not look behind you nor stay anywhere in the plain. Escape to the mountains, lest you be destroyed.” Lot asked if they could go instead to a small city named Zoar nearby instead of to the mountains, and they said yes but to hurry, for they would not overthrow (destroy) the city until Lot and his family arrived in Zoar. “Then the LORD rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, from the LORD out of the heavens. So He overthrew [devastated] those cities, all the plain, all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground. But his wife looked back behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.”

Abraham went early the next morning and saw the smoke of the land “which went up like the smoke of a furnace. And it came to pass, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, that God had remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when He overthrew the cities in which Lot had dwelt.” God had previously told Abraham that He would spare the city if there were only ten righteous people who lived there, but there weren’t even ten there in Sodom and Gomorrah. Like the world was during the times of Noah, sin and filth were the norm and not the exception, and God sent His wrath. However, as with Noah and his family, God spared Lot and his family who obeyed God’s instructions. Lot’s two sons-in-law could have been spared, but they didn’t obey God’s instructions, and neither did Lot’s wife. She had been told not to look back, but she did, she was longing for the city she had just left, the perverted and wicked city; it was where her heart was, and she saw the wrath of God for it.

The USA is just one country that is not heeding the example of what God did to Sodom and Gomorrah, “making them an example to those who afterward would live ungodly.” Israel is another, and there are many others. When we ignore God’s warnings to us, we are subject to His condemnation of us, His wrath upon us. And sadly, unbelievers are ignoring God’s warning, which is not surprising because they don’t believe in God or His word, but we also have people who say they are Christians, who also are not heeding His warnings. Further, there are false teachers who call themselves pastors who are not heeding it. As the Bible demonstrates, where sin is approved, sin abounds, and sin is being outwardly approved and promoted in many so-called churches today. Anything that God calls sin in the Bible should not be promoted and touted, especially in churches, whether it be adultery, thievery, homosexuality, murder, including abortion, lying, etc. Do we hate the sinners? Absolutely not! All of us are sinners, and that is exactly why God sent Jesus, so that we can be saved if we believe in Him as our Savior. But after we are saved, does Jesus want us to remain in our sins? No, He told us, “If you love Me, keep My commandments.” (John 14:15) Jesus’ commandments are the word of God, and it is clear that all sin is an offense to God.

We learn more about Sodom’s sins in the book of Ezekiel. At the time when Israel was divided into the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah, when writing about the sins of Jerusalem, during approximately 593-517 BC, the prophet Ezekiel wrote of the sins of Sodom:

“Look, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: She and her daughter had pride, fullness of food, and abundance of idleness; neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. And they were haughty and committed abomination before Me; therefore I took them away as I saw fit.” (Ezekiel 16:49-50)

In Ezekiel 16:48, God said the sins of Judah were even worse than the sins of its sister Sodom, “‘As I live,’ says the Lord God, ‘neither your sister Sodom nor her daughters have done as you and your daughters have done.’”

In the next to last book of the Bible, the book of Jude, he also wrote about God’s judgment and the sins of Sodom:

“But I want to remind you, though you once knew this, that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. And the angels who did not keep their proper [own] domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day; as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.” (Jude 5-7)

Let us read the characteristics again that Ezekiel used to describe Sodom:

• Prideful

• Fullness of food

• Abundance of idleness

• Did not help the poor and the needy

• Haughty (dictionary.com defines as: “disdainfully proud; scornfully arrogant.”

• Committed abomination (sexual sin; Leviticus 18:22: “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination.”

What nation in the world today has all of these characteristics? I would say the USA has all of them, and other countries, including Israel, have many of them. We have the word of God that He has given us so that we are not ignorant of His commands and of His way, the only way, of salvation from sins through faith in Jesus Christ. Just as the people of Sodom and Gomorrah chose to ignore God, believing that destruction, His wrath could never come, thinking like Lot’s sons-in-law that Lot was joking when he warned them of what was coming, when he told them, “Get up, get out of this place; for the LORD will destroy this city!” (Genesis 19:14), so are we ignoring God’s warnings, and many pastors are not even preaching about them in the churches. They are acting like everything is good, and the USA will be made great again. No, it will not. Our only hope is Jesus Christ. There are some pastors who are preaching prophecy and relating it to events we are seeing in our world today and are readying their flocks so that they know what will happen before it happens, and when it does happen, their faith in Jesus Christ shall not be moved; they will stand strong in His power and might. But, sadly, these pastors are the exception and not the norm. Most are leaving their flocks unprepared, and I would say an increasing number of them are leading them astray, away from the One true God to the god of this world, Satan. May we heed the warnings of Peter. May we heed the warnings of Jude and the apostle Paul and not be led astray by false teachers who are wolves in sheep’s clothing:

“Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Jude 3-4)

“But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.” (Jude 20-21)

“But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come…Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. But evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:1, 12-17) ✝️