Genesis 19:1

Gen. 19:1. "And Lot sat in the gate of Sodom." Where he probably sat exhorting and reproving the people; for the gate of the city seems of old to be the place of resort on all public occasions, not only the place the judges sat to judge the people, but where their teachers sat to instruct and reprove them (Isaiah 29:21; Amos 5:10). The judges might properly do this, but others might also do it who did not take upon themselves the office of judges. If Lot was now reproving the people, and striving to persuade them to repent and reform, he thus [showed that he] had "no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness," but rather reproved them; and God rewarded his withstanding and resisting the stream of the general wickedness of that people, by sending angels on a most kind and merciful errand to him, while in the exercise of his fortitude and opposition; and it is observable that just before the destruction of the people, God used extraordinary means to reclaim them by Lot's reproofs (who was a preacher of righteousness as well as Noah, 2 Peter 2:5-9), and their destruction came upon them just on the manifestation of the highest and most desperate degree of obstinacy in them, in their despising his reproofs, and most horrid wickedness towards Lot and the angels immediately after. Lot having lately been reproving the people in the gate, the place of judgment, made them the more ready to say, as they do in verse 9 - "This fellow came in to sojourn, and he will needs be a judge."

Gen. 19:23-24