Unrepentant Sinners in the Hands of a Holy and Righteous Judge, Who is God

We live in a time when many do not believe in either a heaven, or a hell. However, we have several eye witness testimonies of people from various ages and walks of life, who have experienced both places from which they were subsequently returned to life. The witnesses encourage the faithful, but also warn all living by their testimonies, to consider their own salvation and future destination.
Our nation desperately needs to repent, and experience, by God's forgiveness, a spiritual awakening. Men feel safe because their sins have become the law of the land, but they are fatally in disregard of the Law of God. Because they believe they live with impunity, they reject the Mediator of the Covenant of Grace between God and man, Jesus. Some even believe that because they sit in church, and follow the religious tenets, they are safe. However, this is not so because they remain spiritually unregenerated, and unchanged.
In 1739, the minister Jonathan Edwards delivered a sermon to a church congregation entitled "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God", which stunned the hearers. Many related that they saw the mouth of hell opening up underneath them as they sat in their seats. This sermon caused a widespread move of repentance and spiritual revival in America which history calls The Great Awakening (1730-1755).
This message to you today is titled "Unrepentant Sinners in the Hands of a Holy and Righteous Judge, Who is God", because we are all sinners. Some of us have been cleansed, and made new by casting ourselves upon Jesus. However, hell is reserved for those sinners who are unrepentant, and unconverted by Jesus, who is the only way of salvation and means of escape provided by God from the just condemnation and punishment we would otherwise deserve.

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (Excerpts):
Based upon the Scriptures: "...their foot shall slide in due time..." Deuteronomy 32:35,
and Psalm 73:18-19, "Surely Thou didst set them in slippery places: Thou castedst them down into destruction. How are they brought into desolation, as in a moment! they are utterly consumed with terrors."

"He is not only able to cast wicked men into hell, but he can most easily do it. Sometimes an earthly prince meets with a great deal of difficulty to subdue a rebel, that has found means to fortify himself, and has made himself strong by the numbers of his followers. But it is not so with God. There is no fortress that is any defense from the power of God. Though hand join in hand, and vast multitudes of God's enemies combine and associate themselves, they are easily broken in pieces: they are as great heaps of light chaff before the whirlwind; or large quantities of dry stubble before devouring flames. We find it easy to tread on and crush a worm that we see crawling on the earth; so 'tis easy for us to cut or singe a slender thread that anything hangs by; thus easy is it for God when he pleases to cast his enemies down to hell. What are we, that we should think to stand before him, at whose rebuke the earth trembles, and before whom the rocks are thrown down?

The devil stands ready to fall upon them and seize them as his own, at what moment God shall permit him. They belong to him; he has their souls in his possession, and under his dominion. The Scripture represents them as his "goods" (Luke 11:21). The devils watch them; they are ever by them, at their right hand; they stand waiting for them, like greedy hungry lions that see their prey, and expect to have it, but are for the present kept back; if God should withdraw his hand, by which they are restrained, they would in one moment fly upon their poor souls. The old serpent is gaping for them; hell opens its mouth wide to receive them; and if God should permit it, they would be hastily swallowed up and lost.

The corruption of the heart of man is a thing that is immoderate and boundless in its fury; and while wicked men live here, it is like fire pent up by God's restraints, whenas if it were let loose it would set on fire the course of nature; and as the heart is now a sink 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.

Natural men's prudence and care to preserve their own lives, or the care of others to preserve them, don't secure 'em a moment. This divine providence and universal experience does also bear testimony to. There is this clear evidence that men's own wisdom is no security to them from death: that if it were otherwise we should see some difference between the wise and politic men of the world, and others, with regard to their liableness to early and unexpected death; but how is it in fact? Ecclesiastes 2:16, "How dieth the wise man? as the fool."

But the foolish children of men do miserably delude themselves in their own schemes, and in their confidence in their own strength and wisdom; they trust to nothing but a shadow. The bigger part of those that heretofore have lived under the same means of grace, and are now dead, are undoubtedly gone to hell: and it was not because they were not as wise as those that are now alive; it was not because they did not lay out matters as well for themselves to secure their own escape. If it were so, that we could come to speak with them, and could inquire of them, one by one, whether they expected when alive, and when they used to hear about hell, ever to be the subjects of that misery, we doubtless should hear one and another reply, "No, I never intended to come here; I had laid out matters otherwise in my mind; I thought I should contrive well for myself; I thought my scheme good; I intended to take effectual care; but it came upon me unexpected; I did not look for it at that time, and in that manner; it came as a thief; death outwitted me; God's wrath was too quick for me; O my cursed foolishness! I was flattering myself, and pleasing myself with vain dreams of what I would do hereafter, and when I was saying, ‘Peace and safety,’ then sudden destruction came upon me" [1 Thessalonians 5:3].

So that thus it is, that natural men are held in the hand of God over the pit of hell; they have deserved the fiery pit, and are already sentenced to it; and God is dreadfully provoked, his anger is as great towards them as to those that are actually suffering the executions of the fierceness of his wrath in hell, and they have done nothing in the least to appease or abate that anger, neither is God in the least bound by any promise to hold 'em up one moment; the devil is waiting for them, hell is gaping for them, the flames gather and flash about them, and would fain lay hold on them, and swallow them up; the fire pent up in their own hearts is struggling to break out; and they have no interest in any mediator, there are no means within reach that can be any security to them. In short, they have no refuge, nothing to take hold of, all that preserves them every moment is the mere arbitrary will, and uncovenanted unobliged forbearance of an incensed God.

You probably are not sensible of this; you find you are kept out of hell, but don't see the hand of God in it, but look at other things, as the good state of your bodily constitution, your care of your own life, and the means you use for your own preservation. But indeed these things are nothing; if God should withdraw his hand, they would avail no more to keep you from falling, than the thin air to hold up a person that is suspended in it.
Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider's web would have to stop a falling rock. Were it not that so is the sovereign pleasure of God, the earth would not bear you one moment; for you are a burden to it; the creation groans with you; the creature is made subject to the bondage of your corruption, not willingly;

The bow of God's wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and Justice bends 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 moment from being made drunk with your blood."

The above excerpts are sobering to all of us. They are just a portion of the complete sermon of Jonathan Edwards. However, if you have any doubt at all as to whether this fate, this hell, may await you, it is urgently time for you to accept Jesus as the One who can and will be your Redeemer. He is the One who ransomed us out of this pit which awaited us. It is not God who sends us there, but the weight of our own sin, and our own choice to reject His provision of mercy, that sends ourselves there. Not one of us is "good enough", or "religious enough", to escape on our own. Turn to your Savior today, and call upon His Name, Jesus.
To those who do know Jesus, we are also being called to repent and turn away from our sins:
"If My people which are called by My name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and heal their land."     2 Chron. 7:14
"If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."    1 John 1:9
"...before the great and terrible day of the LORD come...it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the LORD shall be delivered..."  Joel 2:31-32, Acts 2:21, Rom. 10:13)
That day is here.

Full Text of Jonathan Edwards' Sermon:
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

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