Jonathan Edwards
APPLICATION
This sobering subject may be useful in convertin unsaved people in this very congregation.
What we have previously discussed is true of every one of you that are not in Christ. The coming world of misery and the lake of burning brimstone are directly under you. There is nothing between you and the dreadful pit of the glowing flames of the wrath of God but air. Hell’s wide gaping mouth is open, and you have nothing to stand upon, nor anything to take hold of. It is only the power and mere pleasure of God that holds you up.
You probably do not realize this. You find you are kept out of hell, but do not see the hand of God in it. However, think of things like your good health, how you care for your own life, and your plans to live a long time. These are all meaningless if God withdraws His hand; they will not keep you from falling any more than the thin air will hold up a person suspended in it.
Your wickedness makes you as heavy as lead, and holds yu down with great weight and pressure towards hell. If God lets you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf. Then your good health, your care and prudence of your life, and all your righteousness will be no more help to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider’s web would have to stop a falling rock.
Were it not for the sovereign pleasure of God, you would not be kept on this earth one moment. You are a burden to this world, and other people suffer as a result of your sin. Even the sun does not willingly shine upon you to give you light to serve sin and Satan. The good things of the earth are not here to satisfy your lusts or is a stage for your wickedness to be acted upon. Their air does not willingly give you breath of life while you spend your life in the service of God’s enemies.
Animals were created by God for good, and were made for men to serve God with. They do not serve any other purpose. They groan when they are used for reasons contrary to their nature. The world would spit you out, if not for the sovereign hand of Him who rules over it.
There are black clouds of God’s anger now hanging directly over your heads. They contain a dreadful storm with loud thunder. If not for the restraining hand of God, the storm would be unleashed directly over your head. The sovereign pleasure of God, for now, holds the storm or it would come with fury, and your destruction would come like a whirlwind, and you would be like the chaff of the summer threshing floor.
The wrath of God is like a dam on a large lake. The lake rises and rises until a stream of water is released. The longer the stream is stopped, the more rapid and powerful it flows once it is opened. It is true that God’s judgment has not been poured on your evil works. The floods of God’s vengeance have been held off, but your guilt in the meantime is constantly increasing, and you are every day storing up more wrath. The waters are constantly rising, and becoming more and more powerful. There is nothing but the mere pleasure of God that is holding the waters back.
If God only withdraws His hand from the flood-gate, it would immediately fly open, and the fiery floods of the fierceness and wrath of God would rush on you with inconceivable fury, and would come upon you with omnipotent power. If you were ten thousand times stronger than you are, or even ten thousand times stronger than the largest and strongest devil in hell, you could not withstand or endure it.
The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string. God’s justice is bending the arrow at your heart. The bow is tight and straining, and there is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God that owes you nothing, that keeps the arrow one moment from being drunk with your blood.
So all of you that have ever had a change of heart by the mighty power of the Spirit; al of you that were never born again; all of you that have not been made new creatures; all of you that have not experienced new light and life are in the hands of an angry God.
You may have tried to change your life, but one day you will. Those who have believed like you have already experienced sudden destruction when they least expected it. They were saying, “peace and safety.” Then the things they were depending on for peace and safety became nothing but empty shadows in thin air.
GOD HOLDS YOU OVER THE PIT OF HELL
Just like the one holding a dirty spider by the web over a fire, God holds you over the pit of hell. He abores you; His anger is provoked; and His wrath burns against you like fire. He looks at you as worthy of nothing but to be cast into the lake of fire. His eyes are too pure to have you in His sight. You are ten thousand times more detestable to Him then the most hated venomous snake is in ours. You have offended Him infinitely more than any criminal has offended a judge, and yet it is nothing but His hand that keeps you from falling.
There is no other reason that you were allowed to wake up this morning and did not go to hell last night after you closed your eyes to sleep. There is also no other reason that you have not dropped into hell today, but that God’s hand has held you up. There is no other reason why you have not gone to hell since you have walked into church today when His eyes saw the wicked way you have attended His worship.
Yes, there is no other reason that you do not drop down into hell this very minute.
O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in. It is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit full of the fire of wrath. You are held over that pit in the hand of God. His anger is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell.
You hang by a slender thread with the flames of divine wrath licking around it, ready to singe it.
You have no interest in any Mediator, and nothing to save yourself, nothing to keep the flames off, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do to convince God to spare you one moment.
Consider this:
- Whose wrath it is? It is the wrath of the infinite God. If it were only a wrath of man, even though it was a powerful man, it would be nothing. The wrath of kings is very scary, especially that of absolute monarchs. They own the lives and possessions of their subjects. They can do whatever they want with them. Proverbs 20:2 reads, “The wrath of a king is like the roaring of a lion; Whoever provokes him to anger sins against his own life.”
Anyone who angers the kings in danger of the worst punishments humans can invent. However, the most powerful earthly king in all his majesty and armed with his greatest terrors, is but a worm in the dust, in comparison to the great and almighty Creator and King of heaven and earth. All the kings of the earth are like grasshoppers compared to God. They are nothing — really less than nothing!
Nothing can compare to the wrath of the great King of kings. Luke 12:4-5 says, “And I say to you, My friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after he has killed, has power to cast into hell; yes, I say to you, fear him!” - It is the fierceness of His wrath to which you are exposed. We often read of the fury of God; as in Isaiah 59:18, “According to their deeds, accordingly he will repay, Fury to his adversaries, Recompense to his enemies; The coastlands he will fully repay.”
Also in Isaiah 66:15 read, “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 like Revelation 19:15, we read of “the wine press of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.”
The words are very frightening. If only “the wrath of God” had been mentioned it would be frightening enough. However, it is “the fierceness and wrath of God” that is described. The very fury of God! The fierceness of Jehovah God! Oh, how frightening this is! Who can really imagine what these words mean! But it is also “the fierceness of Almighty God.” As though there will be a manifestation of His almighty power in what the fierceness of His wrath will do. It is as if omnipotence was enraged in the same way men show the fierceness of their wrath. Oh! Imagine what this will be like!
What will become of the poor worms that suffer this wrath? Whose body or soul can endure this? What a dreadful, inexpressible, inconceivable depth of misery must the poor people experience who will have to endure this!
Consider this, you that are unsaved. God will execute the fierceness of His anger on you, and He will inflict it without any pity. When God sees your torments, and how your poor soul is crushed and in infinite gloom, He will have no compassion on you. There will be no mercy, nor will God hold the storm back.
He will have no regard for your well-being then. He will not worry about your suffering too much. He will only be concerned that you do not suffer more than justice requires. Nothing will be withheld because it is too hard for you. Ezekiel 8:18 declares, “Therefore I also will act in fury. My eye will not spare nor will I have pity; and though they cry in my ears with a loud voice, I will not hear them. - God is standing right now ready to pity you. Today is a day of mercy. You cry out to Him right now with a hope of obtaining mercy. But once the day of mercy is past, your loudest and most painfull cries and shrieks will be in vain. You will be wholly lost and thrown away by God and He will have no pity. God will have no other use for you but for you to suffer misery. Your existence will have no other meaning than to be a vessel of His wrath fitted to destruction. When you cry out to Him at that time the Bible says God will only “laugh and mock you” (Proverbs 1:25).
How dreadful are the words of Isaiah 63:3, which are the words of the great God: “I have trodden the winepress alone; from the nations no one was with me. I trampled them in my anger and trod them down in my wrath; their blood spattered my garments, and I stained all my clothing.” Can you think of words that carry with them greater examples of contempt, hatred, and fierceness of indignation?
When you cry to God on that day, He will not pity you in your grief. He will not regard you in the least. Instead of pity, He will only tread you underfoot. He will know that you cannot bear the weight of omnipotence treading on you, yet He will not have sympathy. He will crush you under His feet without mercy. He will crush out your blood, and make it pour. Your blood will be sprinkled on His garments, and will stain them. He will not only hate you, but He will hold you in contempt. No place will be fit for you but under His feet to be trampled on as mud in the street.
The misery you will endure is the misery God will inflict to display the wrath of Jehovah. God has it on His heart to show to angels and men, both how wonderful His love is and how terrible His wrath. Sometimes kings on the earth want to show how terrible their wrath is by the extreme punishments they inflict on those who provoke them.
Nebuchadnezzar, the mighty and arrogant king of the Chaldean empire, attempted to show his wrath when angered by Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego. He gave orders that the burning, fiery furnace be heated seven times hotter than it was before. It was raised to the highest degree of fierceness that human art could. However, God is also able to show His wrath and mighty power in the extreme sufferings His enemies.
Romans 9:22 reads, “What if God, wanting to show his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?”
This is God’s design and what He has determined to show how dreadful the unrestrained anger, fury and fierceness of Jehovah is. We will witness this dreadful act of God brought to pass. When the great and angry God has risen up and executed His vengeance on the poor sinner, and the wretch is actually suffering the infinite weight and power of His indignation, God will then call upon the whole universe to behold His majesty and mighty power.
Isaiah 33:12-14 declares, “And the people shall be like the burnings of lime; Like thorns cut up they shall be burned in the fire. Hear, you who are afar off, what I have done; And you who are near, acknowledge my might. The sinners in Zion are afraid; Fearfulness has seized the hypocrites: Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?”
The fate of the unsaved. All of you that are unsaved, this is your fate! If you continue as you are, the infinite might, majesty, and dreadfulness of the omnipotent God shall come down on you in furious torments. You will be tormented in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb. As you are in this state of suffering, the glorious inhabitants of heaven will go back and forth and see it happening.
They will see the anger and fierceness of the Almighty, and when they see it, they will fall down and adore the power of His majesty. Isaiah 66:23-24 reads: “And it shall come to pass That from one new moon to another, And from one sabbath to another, All flesh shall come to worship before me,” says the LORD. “And they shall go forth and look upon the corpses of the men who have transgressed against me. For their worm does not die, And their fire is not quenched. They shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.“ - It is everlasting anger. It would be a dreadful thing to suffer the fierceness and anger of Almighty God for just one moment; but you must suffer it for all eternity. There will be no end to this horrible misery. When you look forward, you will see forever, in an endless duratio of time.
This eternity will swallow up your thoughts, and terrify your soul. You will be in absolute despair with no rest, knowing there will be no deliverance. You will realize that you must endure millions and millions of ages of God Almighty’s merciless vengeance. Your punishment will indeed be infinite! Oh, who can imagine what this wil be like? All that we can possibly say can only be a weak representation of it. It is inexpressible and inconceivable, for “who knows the power of God’s anger?”
How sad and miserable is the condition of those that are currently in danger of this great anger and infinite misery! This is the dismal case of every one of you in this congregation that has not been born again. It matters not how moral, strict, sober and religious you are. Please think about this, whoever you are! There most likely are many in this congregation listening to this sermon right now that will experience this misery for all eternity. We do not know who you are, where you are sitting, or what you are thinking.. You might not be worried at all. You might hear these things and not care at all. You might be flattering yourself thinking that this does not apply to you. Are you the one promising yourself that you will escape God’s anger?
If we all knew that there was just one person in the congregation that was going to hell, would that not be a terrible thing? If we all knew who it was, what pity we would have on them! Would not the rest of us be griefstricken and cry bitterly for them? But, listen — instead of just one, many of you will remember these words in hell! In fact, it is possible that before this very year is out some of you sitting here right now will be in hell. It is possible that someone here listening to these words in this church, in good health, and very secure could be in hell by tomorrow morning. Finally, even those of you that will live the longest on the earth without Christ still have very little time! Your damnation does not sleep; it will come quickly, and in all probability when you least expect it.
Truthfully you have reason to wonder why you are not already in hell. Without a doubt there is already somebody that you know, that deserved to go to hell less than you, that you knew when they were alive, who has died and gone to hell. There is no hope for them now. They are crying in extreme misery and complete despair, and here you are in the land of the living, in the house of God, with an opportunity to obtain salvation. What would this poor helpless person that yu know give for just one day with an opportunity like the one you have right now?
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