Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

Deuteronomy 32:35 and the Image of Sliding into Judgment

Deuteronomy chapter 32 verse 35. Their foot shall slide in due time. In this verse God threatens his vengeance on the wicked unbelieving Israelites who were God's visible people and who lived under the means of grace but who not withstanding all God's wonderful works towards them remained as it says in verse 28 void of counsel having no understanding in them under all the cultivation of heaven they brought forth bitter and poisonous fruit.

As in the two verses next preceding the text. The expression I have chosen for my text their foot shall slide in due time seems to imply the following things relating to the punishment and destruction to which these wicked Israelites were exposed.

One that they were always exposed to destruction as one that stands or walks in slippery places is always exposed to fall. This is implied in the manner of their destruction coming upon them being represented by their foot sliding.

The same is expressed in Psalm 73. Surely thou did set them in slippery places. Now cast them down into destruction. How are they brought into desolation as in a moment to it implies that they were always exposed to sudden unexpected destruction.

As he that walks in slippery places is every moment liable to fall. He cannot foresee one moment whether he shall stand or fall the next. And when he does fall he falls at once without warning. Which is also expressed in Psalm 73.

Surely thou did set them in slippery places. Now cast them down to destruction. How are they brought into desolation as in a moment number three. Another thing implied is there a liable liable to fall of themselves without being thrown down by the hand of another.

As he who stands or walks on slippery ground needs nothing but his own weight to throw him down before that. The reason why they are not fallen already and do not fall now is only that God's appointed time is not come.

For it is said that when that due time or appointed time comes their foot shall slide. Then they shall be left to fall as they are inclined by their own weight. God will not hold them up in these slippery places any longer but will let them go and then at that very instant they shall fall into destruction.

As he that stands on such slippery declining ground on the edge of a pit he cannot stand alone. When he is let go of he immediately falls and is lost. The observation from the words that I would now insist upon is this doctrine.

The Doctrine: Nothing Keeps Wicked Men from Hell but God's Mere Pleasure

There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell but the mere pleasure of God. There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell but the mere pleasure of God by the mere pleasure of God I mean his sovereign pleasure his arbitrary will arbitrary in the sense of being restrained by no obligation hindered by no manner of difficulty anymore than if nothing else but God's mere will had in the least degree or in any respect whatsoever any hand in the preservation of wicked men one moment.

The truth of this observation may appear by the considerations. Number one. There is no want of power in God to cast wicked men into hell at any moment. Men's hands cannot be strong. When God rises up the strongest have no power to resist him.

Nor can any deliver out of his hands. 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 who has found means to fortify himself and has made himself strong by the number 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 it is 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 before whom the rocks are thrown down.

Number two. They deserve to be cast into hell so that divine justice never stands in the way it makes no objection against God's using his power at any moment to destroy them. Yet on the contrary justice calls allowed for an infinite punishment of their sins.

Divine justice says of the tree that brings forth such grapes of Sodom cut it down. Why come with it. The ground. The sword of divine justice is every moment brandished over their heads. And it is nothing but the hand of arbitrary mere mercy and God's mere will that holds it back.

Number three. They are already under a sentence of condemnation to hell. They do not only justly deserve to be cast down further but the sentence of the law of God that eternal and immutable rule of righteousness that God has fixed between him and mankind is gone out against them and stands against them so that they are bound over already to hell.

John chapter 3 verse 18. He that believeth not is condemned already so that every unconverted man properly belongs to hell that is his place from since he is come. John 8 23. He are from beneath and thither is bound.

It is the place that justice and God's word and the sentence of his unchangeable law assigned to him. Number four. They are now the objects of that very same anger and wrath of God that is expressed in the torments of hell.

And the reason why they do not go down to hell at each moment is not because God in whose power they are is not very angry with them as he is with many miserable creatures now tormented in hell who there feel and bear the fierceness of his wrath.

Yet God is a great deal more angry with great numbers that are now on earth. Yeah perhaps with some that are now in this congregation who it may be are at ease. Then he is with many of those who are now in the flames of hell so that it is not because God is unmindful of their wickedness and does not resent it that he does not let loose his hand and cut them off.

God is not altogether such a one as themselves that they may imagine him to be so the wrath of God burns against them. The damnation does not slumber. The pit is prepared. The fire is made ready. The furnace is now hot ready to receive them.

The flames do now rage and glow. The glittering sword is wet and held over them and the pit has opened its mouth under them. Number five. The devil stands ready to fall upon them and sees them as his own.

At what moment God shall permit him. They belong to him. He has their souls in his possession under his dominion. The scripture represents them as his goods. In Luke chapter 11 verse 21. The devil's watch them there ever by their right hand they stand waiting for them like greedy hungry lions that see their prey and expect to have it but for the present are kept back.

If God should withdraw his hand by which they are restrained they would in one moment fly up on their four 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.

Number six. There are in the souls of wicked men those hellish principles reigning that would presently kindle and flame out into hellfire. If it were not for God's restraints there is laid in the very nature of carnal men a foundation for the torments of hell.

There are those corrupt principles in reigning power in them and in full possession of them that are the seeds of hellfire. These principles are active and powerful exceeding violent in nature. And if it were not for the restraining hand of God upon them they would soon break out.

They would flame out after the same manner as the same corruptions and the same enmity does in the hearts of damned souls and would beget the same torments as they do in them. Souls of the wicked are in scripture compared to the troubled sea.

For the present God restrains their wickedness by his mighty power as he does the raging waves of the troubled sea saying hitherto shall thou come but no further. But if God should withdraw that restraining power it would soon carry all before it.

Sin is the ruin and misery of the soul. It is destructive in its nature and if God should leave it without restraint there would need nothing else to make the soul perfectly miserable. The corruption of the heart of man is immoderate and bound less in its fury.

While wicked men live here it is like fire pent up by God's restraints whereas if it were let loose it would set on fire the courts 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 7.

It is no security to wicked men for one moment that there are no visible means of death at hand. It is no security to natural man that he is now in health and that he does not see which way he should now immediately go out of the world by any accident and that there is no visible danger in his circumstances.

The manifold and continual presence experience of the world in all ages shows this is no evidence that a man is not on the very brink of eternity and that the next step will not be into another world.

The unseen unthought of ways and means of persons going suddenly out of the world are innumerable and inconceivable. Unconverted men walk over the pit of hell on a rotten covering and there are innumerable places in this covering so weak that they will not bear their weight and these places are not seen.

The arrows of death fly unseen at noonday. The sharpest sight cannot detect them. God has so many different unsearchable ways of taking wicked men out of the world and sending them to hell that there is nothing to make it appear that God had need to be at the expense of a miracle or go out of the ordinary course of his providence to destroy any wicked man at any moment.

All the means that there are of sinners going out of the world are so in God's hands and so universally and absolutely the subject to his power and determination that it does not depend at all the less on the mere will of God.

Whether sinners shall at any moment go to hell that it means we're never made use of or at all concerned. In the case number eight natural men's prudence and care to preserve their own lives or the care of others to preserve them does not secure them.

A moment to this divine providence and universal experience do also bear testimony. There's 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 216. How diet the wise man even as the fool. Number nine all wicked men. All wicked men's pains and contrivance which they use to escape hell while they continue to reject Christ and so remain.

Wicked men do not secure them from hell. One moment. Almost every natural man that hears of hell flatters himself that he shall escape it. He depends upon himself for his own security. He flatters himself in what he has done in what he is now doing or what he intends to do.

Everyone lays out matters in his own mind how he shall avoid damnation and flatters himself that he contrives well for himself and that his schemes will not fail. They hear indeed that there are few but few saved and that the greater part of men that have died here before gone to hell.

But each one imagines that he lays out matters better for his own escape than others have done. He does not intend to come to that place of torment. He says within himself that he intends to take effectual care and to order matters so for himself as not to fall.

But the foolish children of men miserably delude themselves in their own schemes and in confidence in their own strength and wisdom. They trust to nothing but a the greater part of those who have heretofore lived under the same means of grace are now dead are gone to hell.

And it was not because they were not as wise as those who are now alive. It was not because they did not lay out matters as well for themselves to secure their own escape. If we could speak to them and inquire of them one by one whether they expected when alive and when they used to hear about help ever to be the subjects of its misery.

We doubtless should hear one another replied no. I never intended to come here. I'd laid out matters otherwise in my mind I 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 or in that manner. It came as a death outwitted me. God's wrath was too quick for me. Oh 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. Number 10. God has laid himself under no obligation by any promise to keep any natural man out of hell. One moment. God certainly has made no promises either of eternal life or of any deliverance or preservation from eternal death.

But what are contained in the covenant of grace. The promises that are given in Christ and whom all the promises are yay and amen. But surely they have no interest in the promises of the covenant of grace.

Who are not children of the covenant who do not believe in any of the promises and have no interest in the mediator of the covenant. So that whatever some have imagined and pretended about promises made to natural men's earnest seeking and knocking it is plain and manifest that whatever pains a natural man takes in religion whatever prayers he makes till he believes in Christ God is under no manner of obligation to keep him a moment from eternal destruction.

So that thus it is that natural men are held in the hand of God of 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 them up one moment the devil is waiting for them. Hell is gaping for them. The flames gather and flash about them and would mainly hold on them and swallowed them up.

The fire pit 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. The use of this awful subject maybe for awakening unconverted persons in this congregation.

The Application: Unconverted Sinners Are Hanging by a Thread

This that you have heard is the case of every one of you that are out of Christ. That world of misery that lake of burning brimstone is extended abroad under you. There is a dreadful pit of glowing flames of the wrath of God.

There is hell's wide mouth gaping open and you have nothing to stand upon nor anything to take hold of. There is nothing between you and hell but the air. It is only the power and mere pleasure of God that holds you up.

You're probably not sensible of this. You find you are kept out of hell but do not see the hand of God in it. But look at other things as a good state of your bodily constitution the care of your own life the means that 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 as heavy as lead and attend 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 the 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 for the sovereign pleasure of God. The earth would not bear you for one moment for you are a burden to it. The creation it says in Romans 8 groans with you. The creature is made subject to the bondage of your corruption not willingly.

The sun does not willingly shine upon you to give you its light to serve sin and Satan. The earth does not willingly yield her increase to satisfy your lusts. Nor is it willingly a stage for your wickedness to be acted upon.

The air does not willingly serve you for breath to maintain the flame of life in your vitals while you spend your life in the service of God's enemies. God's creatures are good and were made for men to serve God with and do not willingly subserve to any other purpose and groan when they are abused to purposes so directly contrary to their nature and end.

And the world would spew you out were it not for the sovereign hand of God of him who hath subjected it in hope. There are the black clouds of God's wrath now hanging directly over your heads full of the dreadful storm and big with thunder.

And were it not for their straining hand of God it would immediately burst forth upon you the sovereign pleasure of God for the present stays his rough wind. Otherwise it would come with fury and your destruction would come upon you like a whirlwind and you would be like chaff at the summer threshing floor.

The wrath of God is like great waters that are damned for the present. They increase more and more and rise higher and higher till an outlet is given. The longer the stream is stopped the more rapid and mighty its course when once it is let loose it is true the judgment against your evil works has not been executed hitherto.

The floods of God's vengeance have been withheld but your guilt in the meantime is constantly increasing and you are every day treasuring up more wrath. The waters are constantly rising and waxing more and more mighty and there is nothing but the mere pleasure of God that holds the waters back that are unwilling to be stopped and press hard to go forward.

If God should only withdraw his hand from the floodgate it would immediately fly open in the fiery floods of the fierceness and wrath of God would rush forth with inconceivable fury and would come upon you with omnipotent power.

And if your strength were ten thousand times greater than it is a ten thousand times greater than the strength of the stoutest dirtiest devil in hell it would be nothing to withstand or endure it. 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. That's all you that never passed under a great change of heart by the mighty power of his spirit of God upon your souls.

All you that were never born again or made new creatures and raised from being dead in sin to a state of new and before altogether unexperienced light in life. You are in the hands of an angry God. However you may have reformed your life in many things and may have had many religious affections and may keep up a form of religion in your families and closets and in the house of God.

It is nothing but the mere pleasure that keeps you from being this moment swallowed up in everlasting destruction. However unconvinced you may now be of the truth of what you hear by and by you will be fully convinced of it.

Those that are gone from being in the like circumstances with you seeing that it was so with them for destruction came suddenly upon most of them when they expected nothing of it 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 loathsome insect over the fire abhors you and is dreadfully provoked.

His wrath towards you burns like the fire he looks upon you is worthy of nothing else but to cast into the fire. He is a purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sights. You are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes than the most hateful venomous serpent is in hours you have offended him infinitely more than a stubborn rebel ever did his prints.

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 suffered to awake 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 rose 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 sat here in the house of God provoking his pure eyes.

There is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down.

Into hell.

The Wrath of the Infinite God

Consider the fearful danger that you are in. It is a great furnace of wrath a wide and bottomless pit full of fire of wrath that you are held over in the hand of that God whose wrath is provoked. And since 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 have ever done nothing that you can do to induce God to spare you one moment.

And consider your more particularly several things concerning that wrath that you are in such danger of one 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 potent Prince it would be comparatively little to be regarded.

The wrath of Kings is very much dreaded. Especially the absolute monarchs who have the possessions and lives of their subjects holy in their power to be disposed of it their mere will. Proverbs 20 verse 2.

The fear of a king is as the roaring of a lion who so provoketh him to anger sinneth against his own soul. The subject that very much enrages an arbitrary Prince is liable to suffer the most extreme torments that human art can invent or human power can inflict.

But the greatest earthly potentates in their greatest majesty and strength enclosed enclosed in their greatest terrors are but feeble despicable worms of dust in comparison of the great and almighty creator and king of heaven and earth.

It is but little that they can do when most enraged when they have exerted the utmost of their fury. All the kings of the earth are before God as grasshoppers. They are nothing and less than nothing. But their love and their hatred are to be despised.

The wrath of the great king of kings is as much more terrible than theirs as his majesty is greater. Luke chapter 12 verse 4. And I say unto you my friends be not afraid of them that kill the body and after that have no more they can do.

But I will forewarn you whom you shall fear. Fear him which after he has killed hath power to cast into hell. Yeah I say unto you fear him. Number two. It is the fierceness of his wrath that you are exposed to.

We often read of the fury of God as in Isaiah 59. According to their deeds accordingly he will repay fury to his adversaries. So in Isaiah 66. For behold the Lord will come with fire and his chariots like a whirlwind to winter render his anger with fury and his rebuke with flames of fire.

And in many other places. So in Revelation 1915 we read of the wine press of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. Those words are exceedingly terrible. If it had only been said the wrath of God the words have implied that which is infinitely dreadful.

But it is the fierceness and wrath of God the fury of God the fierceness of Jehovah. Oh how dreadful that must be. Who can utter or conceive what such expressions carry in them. But it is also the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God as though there would be a very great manifestation of his almighty power in that fierceness of his wrath in what it should inflict as though omnipotence should be as it were enraged and exerted as men are want to exert their strength in the fierceness of their wrath.

Oh then what will be the consequence. What will become of the poor worms that shall suffer it whose hand 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. Consider this you that are here present and yet remain in an unregenerate state that God will execute the fierceness of his anger implies that he will inflict wrath without any pity.

When God beholds the ineffable extremity of your case and sees your torment so vastly disproportionate 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 forbear the execution of his wrath or in the least lighten his hand. There shall be no moderation nor mercy. Nor will God then at all stay his rough wind.

He will have no regard to your welfare nor to be at all careful lest you should suffer too much in any other sense. Then only that you shall not suffer beyond what strict justice requires. Nothing shall be withheld because it is so hard for you to bear.

Ezekiel 8 verse 18. Therefore will I also deal in fury mine I shall not spare. Neither will I have pity. And though they cry in mine ears with a loud voice yet I will not hear 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 once the day of mercy is passed and your most lamentable and dolorous cries and shrieks then will be in vain you will be wholly lost and thrown away of God as to any regard your welfare.

God will have no other use to put you to but to suffer misery. You shall be continued in being to no other end for you will be a vessel of wrath fitted to destruction. And there will be no other use for this vessel but to be filled full of wrath.

God will be so far from pitying you when you cry to him that it is said in Proverbs chapter 1 he will only laugh and mock. How awful are those words in Isaiah 63. Which are the words of the great God.

I will tread them in mine anger and will trample them in my fury. And their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments and I will stain all my raiment. It is perhaps impossible to conceive of words that carry in them greater manifestations of these things contempt hatred and fierceness of indignation.

If you cry to God to pity you he will be so far from pitying you in your doleful case or showing you the least regard of 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. It says so as to stain all his raiment. 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 mire of the streets.

The Purpose of Judgment: To Display God's Wrath and Power

Number three. The misery you are exposed to is that which God will inflict to that end that he might show what that wrath of Jehovah is. God have 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 kings 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 haughty monarch of the Chaldean Empire was willing to show his wrath when enraged with Shadrach Meshach and Abednego and accordingly gave orders that the burning fiery furnace should be heated seven times hotter than it was before.

Doubtless it was raised to the utmost degree of fierceness 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 suffering of his enemies.

Romans 922. What if God willing to show his wrath and to make his power known endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction. And seeing this is his design and what he has determined even to show how terrible and 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 dreadful with a 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. Isaiah 33. And the people shall be as the burnings of lime as thorns cut up. Shall they be burned in the fire.

Here ye that are far off what I have done and ye that are near acknowledge my might. The sinners in Zion are afraid. Fearfulness has surprised the hypocrites. Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire.

Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings. 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 ineffable 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 the state of suffering the glorious inhabitants of heaven shall go forth and look on this 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. Isaiah 66. And it shall come to pass from one new moon to another and from one Sabbath to another shall all flesh come to worship before me saith the Lord.

And they shall go forth and look upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against me. For their worms shall not die neither shall their fire be quenched. And they shall be an abhorring into all flesh.

For it is everlasting wrath. It would be dreadful to suffer this fierceness and wrath of Almighty God one moment. But you must suffer it to all eternity. There will be no end to this horrible misery. When you look forward you shall see a long forever a boundless duration before you which will swallow up your thoughts and amaze your soul.

And you will absolutely despair of ever having any deliverance any end any mitigation any rest at all. You will know certainly that you must wear out long ages millions of millions of ages in wrestling and conflicting with this almighty merciless vengeance.

And then when you have done so when so many ages have actually been spent by you in this manner you will know that all is but a point to what remains so that your punishment will indeed be infinite. Who can express what the state of a soul in such circumstances is all that we can possibly say about it gives but a very feeble faint representation of it it is inexpressible and inconceivable.

For who knows the power of God's anger as it says in Psalm 90. How dreadful is the state of those that are daily and hourly in the danger of this great wrath and infinite misery. But this is the dismal case of every soul in this congregation who has not been born again however moral and strict sober and religious they may otherwise be all that you would consider it.

Whether you be young or old there is reason to think that there are many in this congregation now hearing this discourse that will actually be the subject of this very misery to all eternity. We know not who they are or in what seats they sit or what thoughts they now have.

It may be there now at ease and hear all these things without much disturbance and are now flattering themselves that they are not the persons promising themselves that they shall escape. If we knew that there was one person but one in the whole congregation that was to be the subject of this misery.

What an awful thing would it be to think of if we knew who it was. What an awful sight would it be to see such a person. How might all the rest of the congregation lift up a lamentable and bitter cry over him.

But alas instead of one how many is it likely will remember this discourse in hell. And it would be a wonder if some that are now present should not be in hell in a very short time even before this year is out.