An Excerpt From The Sermon
Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God
by Jonathan Edwards
.jpg)
O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in:
1. it is a great furnace of wrath,
2. a wide and bottomless pit,
3. full of the fire of wrath,
4. that you are held over in the hand of that God,
5. whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you,
6. as against many of the damned in hell.
You hang by a slender thread,
1. with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it,
2. and ready every moment to singe it,
3. and burn it asunder;
4. and you have no interest in any Mediator,
5. and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself,
a. nothing to keep off the flames of wrath,
b. nothing of your own,
c. nothing that you ever have done,
d. nothing that you can do,
1) to induce God to spare you one moment.
And consider here more particularly,
Whose wrath it is:
1. it is the wrath of the infinite God.
2. If it were only the wrath of man,
a. though it were of the most potent prince,
b. it would be comparatively little to be regarded.
3. The wrath of kings is very much dreaded,
a. especially of absolute monarchs,
b. who have the possessions and lives of their subjects wholly in their power,
c. to be disposed of at their mere will.
Prov. 20:2. "The fear of a king is as the roaring of a lion: Whoso provoketh him to anger, sinneth against his own soul."
4. The subject that very much enrages an arbitrary prince,
a. is liable to suffer the most extreme torments that human art can invent,
b. or human power can inflict.
5. But the greatest earthly potentates
a. in their greatest majesty and strength,
b. and when clothed in their greatest terrors,
c. are but feeble,
1) despicable worms of the dust,
2) in comparison of the great and almighty Creator and King of heaven and earth.
d. It is but little that they can do,
1) when most enraged,
2) and when they have exerted the utmost of their fury.
e. All the kings of the earth,
1) before God,
2) are as grasshoppers;
3) they are nothing,
4) and less than nothing:
- both their love and their hatred is to be despised.
6. The wrath of the great King of kings,
a. is as much more terrible than theirs,
b. as his majesty is greater.
Luke 12:4,5. "And I say unto you, my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that, have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom you shall fear: fear him, which after he hath killed, hath power to cast into hell: yea, I say unto you, Fear him."
c. It is the fierceness of his wrath that you are exposed to.
d.We often read of the fury of God; as in
Isa. 59:18. "According to their deeds, accordingly he will repay fury to his adversaries."
So Isa. 66:15. "For behold, the Lord will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire."
- And in many other places.
So, Rev. 19:15, we read of "the wine press of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God."
e. The words are exceeding terrible.
1) If it had only been said,
2) "the wrath of God,"
3) the words would have implied that which is infinitely dreadful:
4) but it is "the fierceness and wrath of God."
5) The fury of God!
6) the fierceness of Jehovah!
7) Oh, how dreadful that must be!
8) Who can utter or conceive what such expressions carry in them!
9) But it is also "the fierceness and wrath of almighty God."
a) As though there would be a very great manifestation of his almighty power
b) in what the fierceness of his wrath should inflict,
c) as though omnipotence should be as it were enraged,
d) and exerted,
e) as men are wont to exert their strength in the fierceness of their wrath.
10) Oh! then, what will be the consequence!
11) What will become of the poor worms that shall suffer it!
12) Whose hands can be strong?
13) And whose heart can endure?
14) To what a
a) dreadful,
b) inexpressible,
c) inconceivable depth of misery
d) must the poor creature be sunk
e) who shall be the subject of this!
Consider this,
1. you that are here present,
- that yet remain in an unregenerate state.
2. That God will execute the fierceness of his anger,
a. implies, that he will inflict wrath without any pity.
b. When God beholds the ineffable extremity of your case,
1) and sees your torment to be so fastly disproportioned to your strength,
2) and sees how your poor soul is crushed,
3) and sinks down,
4) as it were, into an infinite gloom;
5) he will have no compassion upon you,
6) he will not forbear the executions of his wrath,
7) or in the least lighten his hand;
8) there shall be no moderation or mercy,
9) nor will God then at all stay his rough wind;
10) he will have no regard to your welfare,
11) nor be at all careful
a) lest you should suffer too much in any other sense,
b) than only that you shall not suffer beyond what strict justice requires.
c. Nothing shall be withheld,
- because it is so hard for you to bear.
Ezek. 8:18. "Therefore will I also deal in fury: mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity; and though they cry in mine ears with a loud voice, yet I will not hear them."
3. Now God stands ready to pity you;
a. this is a day of mercy;
b. you may cry now with some encouragement of obtaining mercy.
c. But when once the day of mercy is past,
1) your most lamentable and dolorous cries and shrieks will be in vain;
2) you will be wholly lost and thrown away of God,
- as to any regard to your welfare.
4. God will have no other use to put you to,
a. but to suffer misery;
b. you shall be continued in being to no other end;
c. for you will be a vessel of wrath fitted to destruction;
d. and there will be no other use of this vessel,
- but to be filled full of wrath.
5. God will be so far from pitying you when you cry to him,
- that it is said he will only "laugh and mock," Prov. 1:25,26.
6. How awful are those words, Isa. 63:3,
a. which are the words of the great God.
"I will tread them in mine anger, and will trample them in my fury, and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my raiment."
b. It is perhaps impossible to conceive of words
1) that carry in them greater manifestations of these three things,
a) contempt,
b) and hatred,
c) and fierceness of indignation.
c. If you cry to God to pity you,
1) he will be so far from pitying you in your doleful case,
2) or showing you the least regard or favor, that instead of that, he will only tread you under foot.
d. And though he will know that you cannot bear the weight of omnipotence treading upon you,
1) yet he will not regard that,
2) but he will crush you under his feet without mercy;
3) he will crush out your blood,
4) and make it fly,
5) and it shall be sprinkled on his garments,
- so as to stain all his raiment.
6) He will not only hate you,
7) but he will have you in the utmost contempt:
a) no place shall be thought fit for you,
b) but under his feet to be trodden down as the mire of the streets.
- so as to stain all his raiment.
6) He will not only hate you,
7) but he will have you in the utmost contempt:
a) no place shall be thought fit for you,
b) but under his feet to be trodden down as the mire of the streets.
The misery you are exposed to is that which
God will inflict to that end,
1. that he might show what that wrath of Jehovah is.
2. God hath had it on his heart to show to angels and men,
a. both how excellent his love is,
b. and also how terrible his wrath is.
3. Sometimes earthly kings have a mind to show how terrible their wrath is,
a. by the extreme punishments they would execute
b. on those that would provoke them.
4. Nebuchadnezzar, that mighty and haughty monarch of the Chaldean empire,
a. was willing to show his wrath
b. when enraged with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego;
c. and accordingly gave orders that the burning fiery furnace
1) should be heated seven times hotter than it was before;
2) doubtless, it was raised to the utmost degree of fierceness that human art could raise it.
5. But the great God is also willing to
a. show his wrath,
b. and magnify his awful majest
c. and mighty power in the extreme sufferings of his enemies.
Rom. 9:22. "What if God, willing to show his wrath,
and to make his power known, endured with much
long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to
destruction?"
and to make his power known, endured with much
long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to
destruction?"
d. And seeing this is his design,
1) and what he has determined,
2) even to show how terrible the unrestrained wrath, the fury and fierceness of Jehovah is,
3) he will do it to effect.
e. There will be something
1) accomplished and brought to pass
2) that will be dreadful with a witness.
f. When the great and angry God hath risen up
1) and executed his awful vengeance on the poor sinner,
2) and the wretch is actually suffering
- the infinite weight and power of his indignation,
3) then will God call upon the whole universe
a) to behold that awful majesty
b) and mighty power that is to be seen in it.
Isa. 33:12-14. "And the people shall be as the burning of lime, as thorns cut up shall they be burnt in the fire. Hear ye that are far off, what I have done; and ye that are near, acknowledge my might. The sinners in Zion are afraid; fearfulness hath surprised the hypocrites, "
Thus it will be with you
1. that are in an unconverted state,
2. if you continue in it;
3. the infinite might, and majesty, and terribleness of the omnipotent God
a. shall be magnified upon you,
b. in the ineffable strength of your torments.
4. You shall be tormented
a. in the presence of the holy angels,
b. and in the presence of the Lamb;
c. and when you shall be in this state of suffering,
1) the glorious inhabitants of heaven shall go forth and look on the awful spectacle,
2) that they may see what the wrath and fierceness of the Almighty is;
d. and when they have seen it,
1) they will fall down
2) and adore that great power and majesty.
Isa. 66:23,24. "And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord. And they shall go forth and look upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against me; for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched, and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh."
It is everlasting wrath.
1. It would be dreadful to suffer this fierceness and wrath of Almighty God one moment;
a. but you must suffer it to all eternity.
b. There will be no end to this exquisite horrible misery.
c. When you look forward,
1) you shall see a long forever,
2) a boundless duration before you,
3) which will swallow up your thoughts,
4) and amaze your soul;
5) and you will absolutely despair
a) of ever having any deliverance,
b) any end,
c) any mitigation,
d) any rest at all.
6) You will know certainly
a) that you must wear out long ages,
b) millions of millions of ages,
c) in wrestling and conflicting
- with this almighty merciless vengeance;
d) and then when you have so done,
e) when so many ages have actually been spent by you in this
f) you will know that all is but a point to what remains.
g) So that your punishment will indeed be infinite.
7) Oh, who can express what the state of a soul in such circumstances is!
8) All that we can possibly say about it,
a) gives but a very feeble, faint representation of it;
b) it is inexpressible and inconceivable:
2. For "who knows the power of God's anger?"
No comments:
Post a Comment