On July 8th, 1741, Jonathan Edwards, the pastor of the Congregational Church of Northampton, Massachusetts, preached the most famous sermon in American history. As a guest preacher at a church in Enfield, Connecticut, he delivered Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, the sermon that sparked the massive movement of religious conversions throughout America which is known as the First Great Awakening. God used this single sermon to alter the landscape of American religious history. Even today, two-hundred and sixty years later, the sermon is included in almost every anthology of American literature and is still widely read and studied by students all over the world.
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God was a passionate and powerful plea for sinful human beings to take seriously the doctrine of the wrath of God. Consider this excerpt from Edwards’ sermon:
The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent 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 the last night; that you was suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep…
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 asunder; 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.
The graphic depictions of the horrors of a literal eternal hell were meant to force sinners to reckon with the reality of the judgment of God. When the sermon was originally delivered, Edwards was interrupted many times by people moaning and shouting, “What must I do to be saved?” Edwards ended the sermon with one final appeal, “Therefore let everyone that is out of Christ, now awake and fly from the wrath to come.” The message had such a profound affect that many people repented from their sins and turned to faith in Christ!
I have often wondered how Americans would respond to Edward’s sermon today! Unfortunately, instead of sinners crying out for mercy in the hands of an angry God, I picture God being squeezed out of the hands of angry sinners. In other words, many people today simply get mad when they hear a sermon about God’s wrath. Instead of shouting out, “What must I do to be saved?” they sit in their seat and silently seethe.
I have been a preacher long enough to know that people adore inspirational sermons about God’s love, kindness, forgiveness, and faithfulness. People cozy up to therapeutic self-help messages which outline five-step plans to “become a better you.” People like to hear homilies that leave them feeling happy! On the other hand, people usually abhor sermons about sin, judgment, and hell. They cringe at messages that convict the heart or demand repentance and change.
How about you? How does your soul respond when you hear Edward’s words? How does the doctrine of the wrath of God make you feel? The Bible explicitly mentions the wrath of God almost 200 times. Today, I would like to share three passages that illustrate the various ways sinners respond to the wrath of God.
1.) Sinners Ignore the Wrath of God
One way that sinners approach the wrath of God is to simply ignore it and pretend like it does not exist. As Jesus was teaching his disciples about the final judgment, he alluded to two times in biblical history when sinners ignored the wrath of God. Listen to what he says in Luke 17:22-35:
Then he said to his disciples, “The time is coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it. Men will tell you, ‘There he is!’ or ‘Here he is!’ Do not go running off after them. For the Son of Man in his day will be like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other. But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation.
Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all.”
“It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all. It will be just like this on the day the Son of Man is revealed. On that day no one who is on the roof of his house, with his goods inside, should go down to get them. Likewise, no one in the field should go back for anything. Remember Lot’s wife! Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it. I tell you, on that night two people will be in one bed; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding grain together; one will be taken and the other left.”
The Book of Genesis gives the detailed accounts of God’s wrath being poured out on the whole world during the days of Noah and later upon the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. One judgment was carried out with water and the other by fire, but they both came as a result of relentless displays of human depravity. In both cases, the people were given opportunity to repent and their wickedness, but they chose to ignore God and continue in their way of life.
In this passage Jesus uses the ordinary activities of life “eating, drinking, marrying, buying, selling, planting, and building” to show that they continued to ignore the impending wrath of God right up until the time of judgment. Regrettably, they did not pay any attention to God or his wrath against sin and they paid the price for it.
How about you? What is your posture to God’s wrath? Do you brush it off or set it aside? Do you ignore it as the people did in the days of Noah and Sodom? The reason Jesus told this to his disciples is because another day of God’s wrath is coming. Let us not make the same mistake others have made!
2.) Sinners Rebel Against the Wrath of God
In addition to ignoring God’s wrath, some sinners actively rebel against it. They are annoyed by at the concept of a God who would actually hold people accountable for their actions; they can become judgmental about God’s judgment and hostile toward the very idea of hell. Some people just seem to try to provoke God’s anger by sinking into even greater sin and rebellion. This is exactly what the Apostle Paul describes in Romans 1:18-32:
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities– his eternal power and divine nature– have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator– who is forever praised. Amen.
Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
Here, Paul makes it clear that God’s wrath is constantly being revealed against people who twist and suppress his truth by their wickedness. Although God makes his truth known to them, they reject it and their hearts become darkened. They engage in all sorts of immoral and sinful behavior and place their stamp of approval on it. By doing this, they are rejecting the wrath of God.
Is this not exactly what we see unfolding before our very eyes today? We live in a society that has largely turned its back on God’s truth. It has openly approved of behaviors that God has called them sinful. Disobeying parents is tolerated today. Did you read about the resent court case in New Jersey where a high school girl sued her parents for making her follow the rules at home? Likewise, gossip, slander, bragging, pre-marital sex, extra-marital sex, and homosexuality are considered acceptable even though God has clearly stated that they are wrong. When we say something is OK when God says it is wrong, we rebel against the wrath of God.
3.) Sinners Humble Themselves before the Wrath of God
The bad news is that many people either ignore or rebel against the wrath of God, but the good news is that some sinners humble themselves before the wrath of God. Consider Paul’s letter to the Ephesian church:
As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions– it is by grace you have been saved. (Ephesians 2:1-5)
In this passage, Paul tells the Ephesians that they were spiritually dead in their trespasses and sins and therefore were by their very nature objects of God’s wrath. But thankfully, these sinners humbled themselves before God and received his grace by putting their faith in him. The grace and forgiveness of Jesus saved their souls from God’s wrath.
In Jonathan Edward’s day, people realized that they were sinners in the hands of an angry God, how about you?