Charles Spurgeon Commentary Genesis 19

Let me urge every Christian to look around them, among all their relatives and friends, to see which of them still remain unconverted. Let your prayers go up for them all: Son in law, and thy sons, and thy daughters.

"The old man is senile," they said; "he always was peculiar, he never acted like the rest of the citizens; he came in here as a stranger, and he has always been strange in his behavior."

I have always felt pleased to think that there were precisely enough hands to lead out these four people, Lot, and his wife, and their two daughters. If there had been one more, there would have been no hand to lay hold of the fifth person; but these two angels, with their four hands, could lead precisely these four persons outside the doomed city. God will always have enough agents to save His elect; there will be sufficient Gospel preaching, even in the darkest and deadest times, to bring His redeemed out of the City of Destruction. God will miss none of His own.

Perhaps the old man's legs trembled under him; he felt that he could not run so far; and, besides, the mountain seemed so bleak and dreary; he could not quite quit the abodes of men.

And Lot said unto them, Oh, not so, my Lord: Behold now, thy servant hath found grace in thy sight, and thou hast magnified thy mercy, which thou hast shewed unto me in saving my life; and I cannot escape to the mountain, lest some evil take me, and I die: behold now, this city is near to flee unto, and it is a little one: Oh, let me escape thither, (is it not a little one?) and my soul shall live.

And he said unto him, See, I have accepted thee concerning this thing also, that I wilt not overthrow this city, for thou hast spoken.

I think that I have said to you before that this sparing of Zoar is an instance of the cumulative power of prayer. I may liken Abraham's mighty pleading to a ton weight of prayer, a supplication that had wonderful force and power. Lot's petition is only like an ounce of prayer. Poor little Lot, what a poor little prayer his was!

Yet that ounce turned the scale. So, it may be that there is some mighty man of God who is near to prevailing with God, but he cannot quite obtain his request; but you, poor feeble pleader that you are, will add your feather's weight to his great intercession, and then the scale will turn. This narrative always comforts me. I think that Zoar was preserved, not so much by the prayer of Lot, as by the greater prayer of Abraham which had gone before; yet the mighty intercession of the friend of God did not prevail until it was supported by the feeble petition of poor Lot.