Consider this, you that are here, that yet remain in an unregenerate state. That God will execute the fury of His anger, implies, that He will inflict wrath without any pity. When God looks upon the inexpressible circumstances of your case, and sees your torment to be so vastly disproportioned to your strength, and sees how your poor soul is crushed, and sinks down, as it were, into an infinite gloom; He will have no compassion upon you, He will not withhold the executions of His wrath, or in the least lighten His hand; there shall be no moderation or mercy, nor will God stop His destroying wind; be will have no regard to your welfare, nor be at all careful for fear that you should suffer too much in any other sense, than only that you shall “not suffer beyond what strict justice requires.”
Nothing shall be withheld, because it is too intense for you to bear. Ezek. 8:18, “Therefore I will deal with them in anger; I will not look on them with pity or spare them. Although they shout in my ears, I will not listen to them.” Now God stands ready to pity you; this is a day of mercy; you may cry now with some encouragement of obtaining mercy. But when the day of mercy is past, your most pitiful and sorrowful cries and shrieks will be in vain; you will be totally lost and thrown away by God, and He will have no regard for your welfare. God will have no other use for you, but for you to suffer misery; you shall for no other purpose; for your body will be a body of wrath designed for destruction; and there will be no other use of your body, but to be filled full of wrath. God will be so far from pitying you when you cry to Him, that it is said He will only “laugh and mock,” Prov. 1:25-31,
Since you ignored all my advice and would not accept my rebuke, I in turn will laugh at your disaster; I will mock when calamity overtakes you–when calamity overtakes you like a storm, when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind, when distress and trouble overwhelm you. Then they will call to me but I will not answer; they will look for me but will not find me. Since they hated knowledge and did not choose to fear the LORD, since they would not accept my advice and spurned my rebuke, they will eat the fruit of their ways and be filled with the fruit of their schemes.
How awful are those words, Isa. 63:3, which are the words of the great God, “I have trodden the winepress alone; I trampled them in my anger and trod them down in my wrath; their blood spattered my garments, and I stained all my clothing.” It is perhaps impossible to conceive of words that carry in them greater manifestations of these three things, viz. contempt, and hatred, and fury of wrath. If you cry to God to pity you, He will be so far from pitying you in your dismal case, or showing you the least regard or favor, that, instead of that, He will only tread you under foot. And though He will know that you cannot bear the weight of omnipotence treading upon you, yet He will not regard that, but He will crush you under His feet without mercy; He will crush out your blood, and make it fly, and it shall be sprinkled on His garments, so as to stain all His clothes. He will not only hate you, but He will have you in the utmost contempt; no place shall be thought fit for you, but under His feet, to be trodden down as the filth of the back alleys.
3. The misery you are exposed to is that which God will inflict to that end, that He might show what the wrath of Jehovah is. God has had it on His heart to show to angels and men, both how excellent His love is, and also how terrible His wrath is. Sometimes earthly rulers have a mind to show how terrible their wrath is, by the extreme punishments they would execute on those that would provoke them. Nebuchadnezzar, that mighty and arrogant king of the Chaldean empire, was willing to show his wrath when enraged with Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego; and accordingly gave the order that the burning fiery furnace should be heated seven times hotter than it was before: doubtless, it was raised to the utmost degree of fury that human art could raise it.
But the great God is also willing to show His wrath, and magnify His awful majesty and mighty power, in the extreme sufferings of His enemies. Rom. 9:22, “What if God, choosing to show His wrath and make His power known, bore with great patience the objects of His wrath–prepared for destruction?” And seeing this is His design, and what He has determined, even to show how terrible the unrestrained wrath, the fury and fierceness, of Jehovah is, He will do it to effect. There will be something accomplished and brought to pass that will be a dreadful witness. When the great and angry God has risen up and executed His awful vengeance on the poor sinner, and the wretch is actually suffering the infinite weight and power of His indignation, then will God call upon the whole universe to behold that awful majesty and mighty power that is to be seen in it. Isa. 33:12-13, “The peoples will be burned as if to lime; like cut thornbushes they will be set ablaze. You who are far away, hear what I have done; you who are near, acknowledge my power!”
Thus it will be with you that are in an unconverted state, if you continue in it; the infinite might, and majesty, and terribleness of the omnipotent God shall be magnified upon you, in the inexpressible strength of your torments. You shall be tormented in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb; and when you shall be in this state of suffering, the glorious inhabitants of heaven shall go out and look on the awful spectacle, that they may see what the wrath and fierceness of the Almighty is; and when they have seen it, they will fall down and adore that great power and majesty. Isa. 66:23-24, “‘All mankind will come and bow down before me,’ says the LORD. And they will go out and look upon the dead bodies of those who rebelled against me; their worm will not die, nor will their fire be quenched, and they will be loathsome to all mankind.”
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
