The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice points the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one second from being made drunk with your blood. Thus all of you that never had the great change of heart, by the mighty power of the Spirit of God upon your souls; all of you that were never born again, and made new creatures, and raised from being dead in sin, to a new state, and never experienced light and life, are in the hands of an angry God.
However, you may have reformed your life in many things, and may have had religious feelings, and may keep up a form of religion in your families and secret prayer closets, and in your churches, it is nothing but His mere pleasure that keeps you from being this moment swallowed up in everlasting destruction. However, you may now be unconvinced of the truth that you now hear, in time you will be fully convinced of it. Those that were in similar circumstances as you are, are now gone and destruction came suddenly upon most of them; when they expected nothing to happen, and while they were saying, Peace and safety: now they see, that those things on which they depended for peace and safety, were nothing but thin air and empty shadows.
The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some detestable insect, over the fire, detests you, and is dreadfully provoked: His wrath towards you burns like fire; He looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be thrown into the fire; He eyes are too pure than to bear to have you in His sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in His eyes, than the most hateful venomous snake is in ours. You have offended Him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince: and yet, it is nothing but His hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. It is to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell last night; that you were allowed to awake up again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep. And there is no other reason to be given, why you have not dropped into hell since you arose this morning, but that God’s hand has held you up. There is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to hell, since you have sat here in this church, provoking His pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending His solemn worship. Yes, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down into hell.
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, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath 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 flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it apart; and you have no interest in any Mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment. And consider here more particularly,
1. “Whose” wrath it is: it is the wrath of the infinite God. If it were only the wrath of man, though it were of the most powerful prince, it would be comparatively little to be regarded. The wrath of kings is very much dreaded, especially of absolute dictators, who have the possessions and lives of their subjects wholly in their power, to be disposed of at their mere will. Prov. 20:2 “A king’s wrath is like the roar of a lion; he who angers him forfeits his life.” The person that greatly enrages a volatile prince, is liable to suffer the most extreme torments that human art can invent, or human power can inflict. But the greatest earthly kings, in their greatest majesty and strength, and when clothed in their greatest terrors, are but feeble, despicable worms of the dust, in comparison of the great and almighty Creator and King of heaven and earth. They can do little, when most enraged, and when they have exerted the utmost of their fury. All the kings of the earth, before God, are like grasshoppers; they are nothing, and less than nothing: both their love and their hatred is to be despised. The wrath of the great King of kings, is much more terrible than theirs, as His majesty is greater. Luke 12:4-5, “I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear Him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear Him.”
2. It is the “fury” of His wrath that you are exposed to. We often read of the fury of God; as in Isa. 59:18, “According to what they have done, so will He repay wrath to His enemies and retribution to His foes.” So Isa. 66:15, “See, the LORD is coming with fire, and His chariots are like a whirlwind; He will bring down His anger with fury, and His rebuke with flames of fire.” And in many other places. So, Rev. 19:15, we read of “the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty.” The words are exceedingly terrible. If it had only been said, “the wrath of God,” the words would have implied that which is infinitely dreadful: but it is the “fury of the wrath of God.” The fury of God! the fierceness of Jehovah! O how dreadful that must be! Who can utter or conceive what such expressions carry in them?
But it is also “the fury of the wrath of God Almighty.” As though there would be a very great manifestation of His almighty power in what the fury of His wrath should inflict; as though omnipotence should be as it were enraged, and exerted, as men exert their strength in the fury of their wrath. Oh! then, what will be the consequence! What will become of the poor man or woman that shall suffer it! Whose hands can be strong? and whose heart can endure? To what a dreadful, inexpressible, inconceivable depth of misery must the poor creature be sunk who shall be the subject of this!
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
