Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (Part 1)

Johnathan Edwards

Their foot shall slip in due time. (Deuteronomy 32:35)

THE WICKED AND UNBELIEVING ISRAELITES ARE THREATENED WITH God’s vengeance in this verse. These Israelites were God’s invisible people who lived outwardly under God’s protection and grace, and yet in spite of all the things God had done for them (as in verse 28) they had no real change of heart and did not really understand the grace of God. Despite God’s continued blessing, they lived sinful lives as shown in two verses preceding our text. The expression I have chosen for my text, “Their foot shall slip in due time,” reveals the eternal punishment the wicked Israelites were in danger of receiving in the following four ways:

1. They were always in danger of this destruction just like one that tries to stand up or walk in a slippery place is in danger of falling. This is because the actual punishment is likened to a foot “slipping.” This same sentiment is expressed in Psalms 73:18, “Surely you set them in slippery places; You cast them down to destruction.”
2. The text implies that they were always in danger of sudden and unexpected destruction. The one who walks in a slippery place is liable to fall at anytime, and if he falls when there is no warning, he just falls. This is also expressed in Psalm 73:19, “Oh, how they are brought to desolation, as in a moment! They are utterly consumed with terrors.”
3. Another thing implied in the text is that they are liable to fall of themselves, without being pushed by someone else. You do not need to be pushed to fall on the ice; your own weight will bring you down.
4. The only reason they have not fallen already, and are not falling now, is that God’s appointed time has not come yet. The verse says that when that due, or appointed time comes, their foot shall slip. When God’s time comes they will fall. God will not hold them on the slippery places anymore; He will let them go. When God lets them go they will instantly fall into destruction just like a man on a slippery slope on the edge of a pit. He cannot hold on by himself. The second he falls he will fall into the pit and be lost.

Here is what we must learn from this verse:

DOCTRINE: There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any moment out of hell, but the mere pleasure and will of God.

By the mere pleasure of God, I mean His sovereign pleasure, or His will. His will is influenced by nothing, nor altered by any circumstances. This truth is clearly seen in the following ways:

1. God certainly has the power to cast wicked men into hell at any moment. Man is helpless to resist God’s will. Even the strongest men have no power to resist Him, or escape. God is not only able to cast wicked men into hell, He can do it easily. Even a great army sometimes has a great deal of difficulty defeating one rebel who has found a way to hide himself, and be protected by his followers. But not so with God. … There is no fortress that is any defense from the power of God.
   Though vast multitudes of God’s enemies lock arms together, they are easily broken in pieces. They are like dandelions blowing in the wind, or a large dry field in the path of a wild brush fire. It is easy for us to step on and squish a worm that we see crawling on the ground, or cut a tiny thread holding something together. It is that easy for God, when He pleases, to cast His enemies down to hell. Who are we to think that we can stand up to, and defy the very God at whose rebuke the earth trembles, and before whom the rocks are thrown down?
2. They deserve to be cast into hell; God’s justice never cries against using His power at any moment to destroy them. Just the opposite is true; God’s justice cries for the infinite punishment of their sins. Divine justice says of the tree that brings forth poisonous fruit, “Cut it down; why does it use up the ground?” (Luke 13:8) The sword of divine justice waves every moment over their heads, and there is nothing but the hand of arbitrary mercy and God’s sure will that holds it back.
3. They are already under a sentence of condemnation to hell. They not only justly deserve to be cast down there, but the sentence of the law of God, that eternal and unchanging rule of righteousness that God has fixed between Him and mankind, stands against them They are already headed there. “… he that believes not is condemned already” (John 3:18). This shows that every unconverted man properly belongs in hell. It is his place; it is where he is from, “You are from beneath” (John 8:23), and where he is going. It is the place that God’s word, His justice, and His unchangeable law have sentenced him to.
4. They are objects of the same anger and wrath of God that others are experiencing in hell right now. The reason they do not go down to hell immediately is not because God is not as angry with them as He is with the miserable creatures now in hell that feel and bear the fierceness of His wrath. God is angrier with many that are now on earth, and without a doubt, many that are now in this congregation, than He is with many of those who are now in the flames of hell.
   So, it is not because God does not know about their wickedness, and does not resent it, that He does not cut them off. However, God is not like one of them, although they may think He is. The anger of God burns against them; their damnation is not sleeping. The pit is prepared; the fire is burning; and the furnace is now hot and ready to welcome them. The flames are now raging and glowing. The glistening sword is sharpened and held over them, and the mouth of the pit is ready to swallow them up.
5. The devil is ready to pounce on them and take them as his own the moment God will allow it. They belong to him; he owns their souls; and they are under his control. Scripture represents them as the devil’s property, “When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own palace, his goods are in peace” (Luke 11:21). Demons watch them; they follow them constantly, waiting for them like greedy hungry lions stalking their prey, ready to devour them, but for now they are held back.
   If God withdraws His restraining hand, they will fly upon their poor souls in a split second. Satan is gaping for them; hell’s gates are wide open ready for them; and if God will allow it, they will be quickly swallowed up and lost.
6. The evil forces of hell are reigning in the souls of wicked men. These would quickly kindle and flame out into hell fire if it were not for God’s restraining hand. A foundation of the torments of hell is part of the very nature of unsaved men. There are corrupt evil forces of hell reigning in them and in full possession of them that are the seeds of hell fire.
   These evil forces of hell are active and powerful, very violent in their nature. If it were not for the restraining hand of God, these evil forces of hell would soon break out, the same way they do in the hearts of damned souls, and would begin tormenting them. The souls of the wicked in Scripture are compared to the troubled sea, “But the wicked are like the troubled sea, When it cannot rest, Whose waters cast up mire and dirt” (Isaiah 57:20). Right now, God restrains their wickedness by His mighty power, as He does the raging waves of the troubled sea, saying, “You shall come no further;” but if God withdraws that restraining power, they would consume all in their way. Sin is the ruin and misery of the soul. It is destructive in nature; and if God should leave it without restraint, nothing else would be needed to make the soul miserable.
   The corruption of the heart of man is boundless in its fury. While wicked men are alive, it is like fire pent up by God’s restraints, but if it were let loose, it would set on fire the course of nature. His heart is now full of sin. So if sin was not restrained, it would immediately turn the soul into a fiery oven, or a furnace of fire and brimstone.
7. Just because their deaths do not seem close, the unsaved are not safe for one moment. Even though they are in good health now, and have no idea how they will ultimately die, they are not safe. It is apparent in many ways and in many places that this is true. Men are often in good health and totally not expecting death, and in a moment are facing eternity in the next world. The ways and means of sudden death are innumerable and inconceivable.
   The unconverted are walking over the pit of hell on a rotting tarp. There are innumerable hidden places in this tarp that are so weak that it will not hold. The arrows of death fly unseen in the middle of the day; even the best eyesight cannot detect them. God has so many different ways of taking wicked men out of the world and sending them to hell, that He needs to only use ordinary providence to destroy any wicked man at any moment. All of these means are in God’s hands, and universally and absolutely subject to His power and determination.
8. The efforts that unsaved men take to protect and care for themselves or have others take care of them do not make them safe for one moment. Divine providence and universal experiences of life testify to this. It is also abundantly clear that there is no difference between men of high or low esteem, educated or uneducated with respect to their likeliness of an early or unexpected death. “As it happens to the fool, It also happens to me, And why was I then more wise?” (Ecclesiastes 2:16).
9. All the wicked men’s efforts and different ways they think up to escape hell, while they continue to reject Christ, do not make them safe from hell one moment. Almost every unsaved man that hears about hell, flatters himself that he will escape it; he depends upon himself for his own safety; he flatters himself in what he has done, in what he is now doing, or what he intends to do.
   Men lay out matters in their own minds how they shall avoid damnation, they congratulate themselves that their schemes will not fail. They may hear a preacher say that there are but a few saved, and that most men that have died before us are in hell, but each one assumes that he has planned things better for his own escape than others have done. They do not expect to go to that place of torment; and they think that they are different and their plans will not fail.
   However, these foolish men miserably delude themselves in their own schemes, and in the confidence of their own strength and wisdom. They are trusting nothing but a dream. Most of those who have lived before them under the same means of grace, are now dead, and undoubtedly gone to hell. It was not because they were not as smart as those who are now alive, and it was not because they did not plan as well for themselves to secure their own escape.
   If we coud talk to them now one by one and ask them if, when they were alive and used to hear about hell, they ever thought they would be there, what would they say? Without a doubt they would say, “No. I never thought I would be here. I planned things differently. I thought my plan was good. I intended to take special care not to come here, but it took me totally by surprise. I was not expecting to die that way. It came like a thief in the night; death outsmarted me; God’s wrath was too quick for me. Oh, my cursed foolishness! I was deluded, flattering myself with my own vanity and self conceit. I was saying, ‘Peace and safety,’ then suddenly death and destruction came upon me.”
10. God is under no obligation or promise to keep any unsaved men out of hell one moment. God certainly has made no promises are yea and amen. But surely they have no interest in the promises of the covenant of grace who are not the children of the covenant, do not believe in any of the promises, and have no interest in the Mediator of the covenant.
    Some have imagined and pretended things about promises made toward the unsaved man’s earnest seeking and knocking that are not true. It is plain that whatever efforts an unconverted man takes in religion or whatever prayers he makes, until he believes in Christ, God is under no obligation to keep him a moment from eternal destruction.
    Here are the facts. The unsaved are held in the hand of God over the pit of hell. They have deserved the fiery pit, and are already sentenced to it. God is dreadfully provoked, and His anger is as hot toward them as it is toward those that are actually suffering the fierceness of His wrath in hell. They also have done nothing in the least to quence His anger.
    God is also not bound by any promise to hold them up one moment. The devil is waiting for them; hell is gaping for them; the flames gather and flash about them, and are ready to swallow them up. The fire pent up in their own hearts is struggling to break out as they have no interest in any Mediator. There are no natural means within reach that can save them. In short, they have no refuge, nothing to take hold of; the only thing keeping them from hell every second is the mere arbitrary will and patience of an angry God.
    
    (Continued in Part 2)