Luke 17:28 Commentary and Bible Study

(Synoptics: Luke 17:28-30)In addition to the description of the days of Noah, Luke records Christ further illustration from the Old Testament. As in 2 Peter, Lot is represented as a man of faith, in spite of his shortcomings. The reason that Christ can draw this comparison between Lot leaving Sodom and the final judgment is on account of God’s superintendence of all history, and particularly the history of hie people. No one by God could so arrange events that they became an analogy of the final judgment.The account of God’s judgment of Sodom is referred to by Paul in Romans 1:27, though not by name. God has not continually judged the world for its sins and its perversions – if he did so, then these supernatural judgments would be non-stop – but he has judged the sin of homosexuality once in Sodom and Gomorrah and recorded it very clearly in his word, and that is sufficient warning for all subsequent generations. Yet that judgment was a token judgment and not the final judgment which will be comprehensive. Daily life in Sodom continued as if the axe was not poised over their necks, and they went on suppressing their consciences as if there was no God about to condemn them. ‘They did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded.’ It is a description of a people to whom it never occurs to think that the end is near. Christ does not refer to their evil perversions; they were known well enough from Moses account in Genesis. They were not just judged for what they did to Lot and his daughter, and what they tried to do to the angels. The report of their wickedness had reached God’s ear long before that day – ‘But the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the LORD exceedingly’ (Genesis 13:13). Their sin was brazen and reached the attention of heaven, and it was not done in ignorance. They had the law of God written on their consciences, and they deliberately chose to ignore it. Lot having made the wrong choice and lived an unseparated life among these wicked people, had to be extracted by an angelic visitation. But what Chris refers to is the normality of life in the cities just before they fell. It is the suddenness of the event that Christ draws attention to, and its unexpected nature as far as they were concerned. Little did the people think that this was the day in which their city and their lives would be destroyed. They did not understand that God’s eye was upon them every day, and it was only because he worked according to his timetable that their lives were extended even to that point. Judgment did not wait a moment longer than necessary. The very day that Lot and his family were led out of Sodom, fire and brimstone from heaven poured down on the cities – it was from heaven because it was the expression of God’s fury against their unnatural relations. Indeed Lot had to be hurried out of the city, because he lingered in the place that was about to be destroyed. It was as if the wrath of God could not wait a minute longer, such was his hatred of the behaviour of those people.