SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD

In the early 1700’s lived a man by the name of Max Jukes. Jukes did not believe in Christ or the ways of Christianity. He married an unbeliever. Some years later someone researched his family and reported that to that date, he had produced 1,026 descendants. Of his descendants, two hundred were public prostitutes, one hundred were drunkards, one hundred of his descendants (nearly 10 %) had been imprisoned for an average of 13 years each and the family had cost the government over one million dollars. The family had made very little if any contribution to society.

Jukes had a neighbor by the name of Jonathan Edwards. Edwards was a very devoted Christian and married a devout Christian. At the time the research of the two families was conducted, Edwards had 729 descendants which included 60 authors of good books, 300 ministers, 65 college professors, 13 university presidents, 3 U.S. congressmen and one vice president of the United States.[1]

When Edwards became a minister of the gospel in Massachusetts, spirituality in our country was running very low. Drunkenness, immorality and indifference to God were the normal ways of life. Edwards was inspired by 1 Timothy 1:17, “Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory for ever and ever amen!” Edwards was noted for his deeply moving sermons on love, grace and the beauty and majesty of God but he became convinced that we cannot really understand the great love of God until we understand the horribleness of sin. In 1741 He preached his most famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Latterly millions first read this classic in high school or college literature classes. When Edwards preached this sermon he did not deliver it in a loud “hellfire and damnation” style. He did not raise his voice or even move his arms. He simply made every word ring out clearly. Out of a population of just 300,000, in his day, nearly 50,000 people (6%) gave their lives to God in just 2 years. He was instrumental in changing the entire moral tone of New England and stirred early America to its very foundation. This stirring had much to do with the writing of our Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Seeing people saved from the penalty of their sins is your author’s lifetime goal. And I wonder, maybe if we would get back to preaching what the Bible says about sin and its punishment, we, even today, might be able to see another great revival sweep again across our nation.

One of the misconceptions of our time is that God is nothing but a big old Santa Clause; always kind, always gentle, always patient, and always giving and always forgiving. God has two sides just like we do. God is a God of love but he also a God that gets angry with sin and the sinner.

Sinners in the hands of an angry God

There are many terms in the Bible that describe God’s anger toward the unrepentant sinner. Words like indignation, jealousy, fury, vengeance, hate, wrath, and anger are found 621 times in the Bible. (The word love is found 551 times.) Let’s examine a few of these words.

Indignation: This word is found 6 times in the Bible. The word means, Anger resulting from injustice or meanness.

Psalms 78:49, “He unleashed against them his hot anger, his wrath, indignation and hostility--a band of destroying angels.”

Jealousy: This word is found 20 times in the Bible. It means, demanding exclusive loyalty, resentment of a rival.

Exodus 20:5, “You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.”

Fury: This word is found 24 times in the Bible.

Revelation 14:9-10, “He, too, will drink of the wine of God's fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. He will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever. There is no rest day or night.”

Vengeance: This word is found 33 times in the Bible. It means getting revenge, paying back, giving them their dues.

Deuteronomy 32:41“I will take vengeance on my adversaries and repay those who hate me. I will make my arrows drunk with blood, while my sword devours flesh: the heads of the enemy."

2 Thessalonians 1:7-9 KJV, “…when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power.”

Hate: This word is found 80 times in the Bible. This word means to a strong feeling of dislike; to despise or detest.

Psalms 11:5, “The LORD examines the righteous, but the wicked and those who love violence his soul hates.”

Notice that God not only hates the sin but the sinner who will not repent.

Wrath: This word is found 196 times in the Bible. It means intense anger, rage, any action carried out in great anger, especially for punishment or vengeance.

Jeremiah 10:10, “When he is angry, the earth trembles; the nations cannot endure his wrath.

Anger: This word is found in the Bible 262 times. This word means a hostile feeling of displeasure, rage.

Psalms 90:11, “Who knows the power of your anger? For your wrath is as great as the fear that is due you.”

Nehemiah 1:6 “Who can withstand his indignation? Who can endure his fierce anger? His wrath is poured out like fire; the rocks are shattered before him.

Notice the anger shown in the next two passages.

2 Peter 2:4-10. “For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them into gloomy dungeons to be held for judgment; if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; if this is so, then the Lord knows how to hold the unrighteous for the day of judgment, while continuing their punishment.”

Proverbs 1:24-26 “But since you rejected me when I called and no one gave heed when I stretched out my hand, 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.”

Considering these passages in the Scriptures, Edwards prepared his sermon that moved thousands to God. His sermon went something like this.

What could we compare to the indignation of God? His indignation is like water that is damned up; its pressure and volume increases more and more. It rises higher and higher until an outlet is given. The longer the stream is stopped, the more rapid and mighty it will become once it is loosed. It’s true that judgment against evil has not yet been poured out but wicked people are constantly increasing the wrath that will be poured out against them.

There is nothing but the patience of God that is holding the water of wrath back. The water does not want to be held beck and it presses hard to be released. If God would for a moment move his hand away from the floodgate, it would immediately fly open and the fiery floods of the fierceness of His vengeance would rush out and come upon all the wicked and if their strength was a thousand times greater than it is, it wound not be able to hold it back.

The bow of God’s fury is bent, and the arrow is on the string, and justice bends the arrow at the heart of the wicked. It is nothing but the mere self-control of God that keeps the arrow from, this moment, becoming drunk with your blood, if you are not his child.

Therefore all who have never given their hearts to God, who have never been born again, who have never buried the old sinful nature in baptism and from it raised to a new committed life, you who have never become a Christian are in the hands of an angry God and it is nothing but his patience that is keeping you, this moment, from being swallowed up in everlasting destruction.

God holds you over the pit of hell much like someone might hold a spider over a fire. His wrath towards you burns like fire; He looks upon you as worthy of nothing less that eternal suffering! (Isaiah said, “All our righteous acts are like filthy rags,” Isaiah 64:6 NIV.)

God has purer eyes than to allow you to remain in his sight. You turned your back on the son he sent to die for you. Your indulgence in sin is 10,000 times more hated in His eyes and the most hated snake in yours, yet there is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire at this very moment. There is nothing but his long suffering that kept you out of hell last night-- Nothing but His patience that allowed you to awake again this morning in this world. There is no reason to give why you have not gone to hell since you began listening to this sermon. There is nothing else that can be given as a reason that God has not dropped you into hell already.

Oh 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, and you are held over it in the hand of that God whose wrath caused the great armies of Egypt to be drowned, who destroyed four cities along with Sodom by burned the flesh of all their people with sulfur, who caused the whole world to be destroyed by a flood in the time of Noah. You are hanging by a spider’s thread with flames of divine anger flashing about you and you have no one to plead your case. Nothing to hold on to to save yourself.

Let everyone that is yet out of Christ, hanging over the pit of hell, whether old man or woman, middle-aged or young, now listen to the loving call of Jesus.

Let everyone that is out of Christ awake and run from the hands of an angry God. "Flee for your lives! Don't look back, and don't stop anywhere in the plain! Flee to the mountains or you will be swept away!" Genesis 19:17.

Now, “Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward you, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shall be cut off,” Rom 11:22 KJV.

“As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel?” Ezekiel  33:11 NIV.

Reader, if you have not given your life to God do it now! If you have questions contact me.

Because Jesus died for us,

Norman Childs

This column lists books
that can be viewed from this website.

Just click on the book title

We Can Know . . .

There is a God in Heaven

Jesus Is God

We can know our understanding of the Bible is accurate. Bible Study

 There Is A Literal Heaven

The Way To Heaven

America's Providential Heritage

What Made America Great? Home page

What God says about Homosexuality

What Is Hell Like?

Yielding To The Master's Hands