Our sermon for this morning is the continuation of Jonathan Edwards' sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. This sermon was preached nearly 300 years ago, but it is so applicable today. This sermon then, which effectually used for the conversion of many, many sinners, which God so effectively used to create a new Reformation, a sermon then that is so applicable today because it is so seldom heard, so seldom preached. Today, we are to the application of this sermon hear the word of Jonathan Edwards, which he preached, bringing forth the continuation of the Sermon on Hell, the application, the use of this awful subject must be for the awakening of unconverted persons to the conviction of This that you have heard is the case of everyone outside of Christ. That world of misery, that lake of burning brimstone is extended abroad under you. There is the dreadful pit of the glowing flames of the wrath of God. There is hell's wide gaping mouth open in that 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 the mere pleasure of God that holds you up. You are probably not sensible of this, that you find you are kept out of hell, but do not 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 hands, that they would avail the whole more to keep you from falling than the thin air to hold up a person who is suspended in it. Your wickedness made you, as it were, heavy as lead, and to rent downward with great weight and pressure toward hell. And if God would let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf. And your healthy continence and your own care and your own prudence and all your own 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. No, were it not for the sovereign pleasure of God, the earth would not bear you one moment. For you, you are a burden to it. The creation groans with you. The creature is made subject to the bondage of your corruption and not willingly. The sun does not shine willingly upon you to give you light and to serve sin and Satan. The earth does not willingly yield or increase to satisfy your loss. nor is it willing to be 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 vittles while you spend your life in the service of God's enemies. God's creatures are good and were made for good for man to serve God with, and they do not willingly subserve any other purpose. And when they are abused to their purpose, so directly contrary to their natural end in the world, the world would spew you out, were it not for the sovereign hand of him who has subjected it to it in hope. Yes, there are 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 the restraining hand of God, They would immediately burst forth upon you. The sovereign pleasure of God for the present stays his handling, when otherwise it would come with fury and destruction. It would come like a whirlwind and would be like the chaff on the summer trushing floor. The wrath of God is like great waters, then are restrained for the present. Yes, they are restrained for the present, but they increase more and more and rise higher and higher till, till an outlet is given and the longer the stream is stopped, the more rapid and the more mighty is its course. when once it is let loose. It is true that judgment against your evil works has not yet 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. And there is nothing, nothing but the mere pleasure of God that holds these waters back. They that are willing to be stopped are pressed hard to go forward. If God should only withdraw his hand from the floodgate, It would immediately fly open and the fiery fury floods of fierceness and the wrath of God would rush forth with the inconceivable theory, theory, and it would come upon you with omnipotent power. And even if your strength were 10,000 times greater than it is. Yes, 10,000 times greater than the strength of the stoutest, the sturdiest devil in hell. It would be nothing to withstand or endure it. The bow of God's wrath is bent, and the arrow is made ready on the string, and justice directs strains at the string and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of gone and that of an angry gone without any promise or obligation at all that keeps the arrow one moment from being drunk with your blood. Thus all of you that have never passed under a great change of heart by the mighty power of the Spirit of God upon your souls. All you that never were born again and never made new creatures and never raised from the dead in sin to a state of new are in the hands of an angry God. However much you may have reformed your life in many things, and many have religious affections, and may keep up a form of religion in your families, and in your closets, and in the house of God, it is nothing but His mere pleasure that keeps you from being in this moment swallowed up in everlasting destruction. However unconventional you may now be of the truth of what you hear, by and by you will be fully convinced of it. Those that are God from being in the like circumstances with you see that it was their soul with them. For destruction comes suddenly upon almost upon most of them when they expected nothing of it. And 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. Yes, the God that holds you over the pit of hell, much in the same way as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, he abhors you and is dreadfully angry. His wrath toward you burns like fire. He looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into this fire. He is of pure eyes and too bare to have you in his sight. You are 10,000 times more abominable in his eyes than the most hateful You, you have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did. And yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire of hell every moment. It is to be described ascribed to nothing else. that you did not go to hell last night, that you were suffered to awake again in this world this morning after you closed your eyes to sleep. Oh, there is no other reason to be given while you have been hearing and of his mercy. Yes, no other reason can be given why you do not at this very moment drop down into hell. O sinner, consider the dreadful, the fearful danger you are in. It is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and a bottomless pit full of the fire of wrath that you are held over in the hand of God, whose wrath is probably incensed as much against you as against many of the damned already in hell. Yes, you hang by a slender thread with the flames of divine wrath lashing around it and be made ready every moment to singe it to burn it asunder and any moment and nothing to hold on. nothing to save yourself, nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own power, nothing that you have done, nothing that you can do to induce God to spare you one moment. They consider here more particularly Oh, it is the wrath of the infinite God. If it were only the wrath of man, though it be of the most powerful prince, it would be comparatively little to be considered. But it is much more dreadful, especially of absolute monarchs who have the possession in the lives of their subjects held in their power to be disposed of at their mere will. Yes, Proverbs 20, verse 2, the fear of a king is as the roaring of a lion. Whosoever provoketh him to anger, sinneth against his own soul. The subject who very much enrages an arbitrary prince is liable to suffer the most extreme torments that humans can invent or human power can afflict. But the greatest earthly pontificates in their greatest majesty and strength and when clothed in their greatest terrors, in comparison with the great and the almighty creator and king of heaven and earth is nothing. It is but little that earthly monarchs can do. Most in need, when most enraged, but when they have exerted the utmost of their fury, all the kings of the earth before God are as grasshoppers. They are nothing in power, and less than nothing. Both their love and their hatred are to be despised. The wrath of the great king of kings, he is much more terrible than their power, than their majesty. Oh, his majesty is infinitely greater. And I say to you, my friends, be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more. power that they can do. But, but I will warn you whom you shall, should fear. Fear Him, God who after He has killed, has power to cast you into hell. Yea, I say unto you, fear Him, Luke 12, verse 4. Second, it is the fierceness of His wrath that you are exposed to. We often read of the theory of God as in Isaiah 59, verse 18. According to their deeds, accordingly He will repay. So also Isaiah 66 verse 15. For behold, the Lord will come with fire and with his chariots like a whirlwind to rent his anger and his rebuke with And so also in many other places in scripture we read, thus we read of the winepress of the fierceness and the wrath of almighty God in Revelations 19 verse 15. The words are exceedingly terrible. Oh, if it had been said the wrath of God The words would have implied that which is unspeakable, dreadful, but it is said, the fierceness and the wrath of God, the fury of God, the fierceness of Jehovah. Oh, how dreadful must that be? Who cannot conceive what expressions are carried in them? But it is the fierceness and the wrath of Almighty God. As though there would be a very great manifestation of His mighty, His almighty power, in which the fierceness of His wrath would inflict as though Omnipotence shall be, as it were, enraged and extorted, as men are rotten to exert their strength in the fierceness of his wrath. Oh, then what will be the consequences? What will become of the poor worm that shall suffer it? whose hands can be strong and whose heart can endure this. Oh, to what a dreadful and inexpressible and inconceivable depth of misery must this poor creature be sunk, who shall be the subject of God's almighty wrath. Oh, consider this. that God will execute the fierceness of his almighty anger. Oh, it implies that he will inflict wrath, wrath without pity. Yes, when God beholds the ineffable extremity and the serious torment to be so vastly disproportionate to your strength, And when he sees how your poor soul will be crushed and will sink down, as it were, into an infinite gloom, God will have no compassion upon you. God will not forbear in the execution of his wrath. There will be no moderation, no mercy. Nor will God then at all stay his rough wind. God will have no regard to your welfare. O be it ever all careful, lest you should suffer too much in any sense, that you should not suffer beyond what strict justice requires. Oh no, nothing of his wrath will be withheld, because you imagine it is too hard for you to bear, that therefore will I also deal in fury. I shall not spare, neither will I have pity. God says, though they cry to my ears with a loud voice, yet Will I not hear them? Ezekiel 8, verse 18. Now, now God stands ready to pity you. Now is the day of mercy. You may now cry with some encouragement of obtaining mercy. But when once the day of mercy is past, your most lamentable and horrible cries and shrieks will be in vain. You will be totally lost and thrown away from God as to any regard of your welfare. God will have no other use to put you to, but to suffer misery, which you may be continually be in, to no end. For you, you are a wrath of, a vessel of wrath, fitted for destruction. and God will have no other use of this vessel but only to be filled with the wrath of God who will be so far from pitying you when you cry lamentably to him that God says he will only laugh and mock. He will only laugh at mine because he says I have called and you refused. I have stretched out my hand and no man regardeth it. But ye have said you will have none of my console and none of my reproof. then I will also laugh at your calamity. I will mock when your fear cometh, read Psalm 2. When your fear cometh as a desolation and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind, God says he will laugh at your derision. When distress and anguish comes, then they will call upon me But I will not answer. Yes, they shall seek me, but they shall not find me. For that they hated knowledge on earth and did not choose the fear of the Lord. They would have none of my console. They fully despised all my reproof. Therefore, therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way and be filled with their own devices. For the turning away of the simple shall slay them and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them. Proverbs 1 verse 24. How awful are these words of the great God. I will tread them down in my anger, and I will trample them in my fury. Their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my raiment. Isaiah 63, verse 3. Oh, it is perhaps impossible to conceive of words that carry in them greater manifestations of these three things, namely God's contempt, God's anger, God's hatred and fierceness in indignation. Oh, if you cry to God to pity you, God will be so far from pitying you in your awful case. or so far from showing you the least reward or favor. But instead, God will only tread you down underfoot. And though he will know that you cannot bear the weight of his omnipotence treading down upon you, yet Yet he will not regard that, but he will crush you further under his feet without mercy. He will crush out your blood and he will make it fly and it shall be sprinkled upon his garments so as to sustain all his reign. Oh, God will not only hate you, But God will have you in the uttermost contempt. No place is what shall we thought would be fit for you, but under his feet to be trodden down as the mire of the street. Third, the misery you are exposed to. Is that misery which God will inflict himself to the end upon you that he might show what the wrath of Jehovah is? God has had it in his heart to show to angels and to men both how excellent his love is, but also how terrible his wrath is. Oh, sometimes earthly kings have a mind to show how terrible their wrath is by the extreme punishments that they execute upon those that provoke them. Yes, Nebuchadnezzar, that mighty and strong monarch, of the strong empire was willing to show his wrath when enraged with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and accordingly gave order that the burning, fiery furnace should be heated seven times hotter than it was before. Oh, doubtless that furnace was raised to the uttermost that human art could possibly raise it. But the great omnipotent God is more willing to show his wrath and magnify his awful majesty and his mighty power in the extreme suffering of you, his enemy. 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? Oh, read in Romans 9, verse 22. And seeing this is God's design, and that God has determined even His unmixed, unrestrained wrath is. The fury and the fierceness of Jehovah is. He will when the great and the angry God has raised up and executed his awful vengeance on the poor sinner, and that wretch is actually suffering the infinite weight, the infinite power of God's indignation. Oh, then will God call upon the whole universe to look and behold the awful majesty and the awful power that he is seen in its afflictions upon the damned. And the people shall be as the burning of lime, as thorns cut up, shall they be burned in the fire. Oh, I fear ye that are afar off, what I have done, and ye that are near, Acknowledge my might, that the sinners in Zion may be afraid. Fearfulness has surprised the hypocrites. Oh, who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings? Isaiah 33, verse 12 through 14. Thus it will be with you, and all that are in an unconverted state, if you continue in it. Yes, the almighty, infinite mind, the majesty, and the terribleness of the omnipotent God shall be magnified upon you in ineffable application of in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And when ye shall be in the state of suffering, all the glorious inhabitants of heaven shall go forth and look upon you that all of heaven may see what the wrath and the fierceness of the Almighty is. And when heaven has seen it, they will fall down and adore the great power and majesty of Jehovah. And it shall come to pass that from one new moon to another and 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 had transgressed against me. For their worm shall not die, and there shall be an abhorring unto all flesh. Isaiah 66 verse 23. Fourth, it is an everlasting wrath. It shall be dreadful to suffer this fierceness and the wrath of Almighty God for one moment. But you, time without end there shall be no end to this exquisite horrible misery oh when you look forward you shall see a long forever a boundless duration eternally before you which will swallow up your thoughts and you will absolutely despair any deliverance, any and any mitigation, any rest at all. Oh, you will know with certainty that you must wear out long ages, millions and millions of ages in rustling and conflicting with the almighty wrath His merciless vengeance. And men, when you have done so done, when many, many ages have actually been spent by you in this present manner, you will know that all is but a small point to what remains. So, so that your punishment will indeed be infinite? Oh, what can express what the state of the soul in such circumstances is? All that we can possibly say about it gives but a feeble and a faint representation of it. It is inexpressible. Words fail and is inconceivable for who can know the power of God's infinite wrath and anger. Oh, how dreadful is the state of those who are daily and hourly in the danger of this great wrath and his infinite misery. But this is the dismal case of every soul that has not been born again. however moral and strict and sober and religious they may otherwise be. Oh, that you would consider it, whether you be young or old. There is reason to fear that there are many who will hear this sermon or who have heard the gospel. who will actually be the subject of God's very misery in hell to all eternity, many. We know not who they are or what thoughts they now have. It may be they are now at ease in hearing all these things without much disturbance and how they are flattering themselves today They are not such persons promising themselves that they shall escape hell. Oh, if we knew there was even one person, but one of those that we know that would be subject to this misery, what an awful thing it would be to think of. Oh, if we knew who it was, How might every Christian lift up a lamentable and a bitter cry over him? But alas, instead of one, how many, many of the solemn reflections are in hell? And some may be in hell in a very short time before this year is out. And it would be no wonder if some of my hearers who are now in health may be in hell before tomorrow morning. Those of you who finally continue in their natural unconverted condition, who may be kept out of hell the longest, will still be there in a little time. Your damnation does not slumber. It will come swiftly, very suddenly upon many of you. Oh, you have reasons to wonder that you are not already in hell. It is doubtless the case of some whom you have seen and heard that never deserved hell more than you. and that therefore appear as likely to have been as alive as you are. Their case is past, O hope. They are crying, lamenting in extreme misery and perfect despair right now. And here, here you are in the land of the living. blessed with Bibles and Sabbaths and ministers, and you have an opportunity to obtain salvation, what would not hopeless souls in hell give for one day's opportunity, such as you now fully enjoy? Yes, now, now you have an extraordinary opportunity A day wherein Christ has thrown wide open the door and stands calling and crying with a loud voice to poor sinners. Yes, today a day wherein many are flocking to him and pressing into the kingdom of God. Many are daily coming from the east, the west, north and south. Many that were buried lately in the same miserable unconverted condition that you are in are now in a happy state with their hearts filled with love to him who has loved them and washed them from their sins in his own blood. And they are rejoicing in the hope of the glory of God. Oh, how awful it is to be left behind at such a day, and to see so many others feasting, while you are pining and perishing, to see so many rejoicing and singing for joy of heart, while you have cause to lament and mourn for sorrows of the heart. and how for the crushing and the vexation of spirit. Oh, how can you rest this morning one moment in such a condition? Are not your souls as precious as the souls of those who are flocking day to day to Christ? Are there not many who have lived long on this earth who are not to this day born again? And so are aliens from the Commonwealth of Israel and have nothing ever since they have lived, but have treasured up wrath against the day of his wrath. Oh, sirs. Your case is an extremely special case, an extra special manner. Your case is extremely dangerous. Your guilt and your hardness of heart are extremely great. Oh, do you not see how generally persons of your years are passed over and left? in the dispensations of God's mercy, that you have need to consider yourselves and to wake thoroughly out of sleep. You cannot bear God's fierceness and wrath of the infinite almighty. And you young men and young women, will you neglect which you now enjoy when so many others of your age are renouncing all youthful vanities and flock to Christ? Do you especially now in this today's opportunity take advantage of it? But if you neglected, it will soon be with you. as it is with all those persons who spent all the precious days of youth living in sin and are now come to such a dreadful and passing blindness and hardness. And you children, children who are unconverted, do not ye know that ye are going down to hell? to bear the dreadful wrath of that God who is now angry with you every day and every night? Will you be content to be the children of the devil? Will you remain unconverted? Or will you become the holy and the happy children Oh, today let everyone that is yet out of Christ and hangs over the pit of hell, whether they be old men or women or middle-aged or young people or little children, now hearken to the loud calls of God's Word and providence. Today, this is the acceptable year of the Lord, a day of great mercy. To some, it will undoubtedly be a day as a remarkable vengeance. Men's hearts hardened for such a day as this, if they neglect their soul. Never was there a time such as this, when so many means were employed for the salvation of sinners, the salvation of souls. And if you today entirely neglect them, you will eternally curse the day of your birth. Now undoubtedly it is as they were in the days of John the Baptist. The axe is laid at the root of the tree, and every tree which bringeth forth not good fruit must be hewn down and cast into the fire. Therefore, therefore, let everyone today that is out of Christ now awaken and now flee from the wrath of God to come. For the wrath of Almighty God is undoubtedly hanging over every unregenerated sinner. Let everyone flee out of Sodom. Escape for your lives. Look not behind you. Escape to the mountains. Oh, so finishes the application of Jonathan Edwards' sermon. Sinners in the hands of the angry God, you have heard the main body of his sermon. You have heard today the application of his sermon. Oh, what is a dreadful message for the lost. and especially applicable in our day, where so many live by an imaginary Christ, a counterfeit Christ. Imagine peace and safety is their portion. Imagine that they shall escape hell. Recently, I saw a survey that only 2% of people imagined that they could possibly go to hell. Oh, we do not know the number and we may not speculate, but the Bible tells us many, many are on the broad way to destruction. And few there be on the straight and the narrow way, which lead us to life. Oh, take God's word to heart today. Hell is real. Hell is waiting for all those who are outside of Jesus Christ, who are outside of the forgiveness of Jesus Christ, covered in his blood, covered in his righteousness. Oh, have you thought about hell? It is a subject so avoided today. And it is made a byword, a curse word. So many people use that word so lightly simply to negate and to soften the impact of it in their own imaginations. But if we are outside of Jesus Christ, we shall go to hell forever and ever and ever. and ever bearing the wrath, the almighty wrath of God almighty. And yes, all of heaven shall witness our pain, that destruction. And they shall say, the Lord is right. The Lord is righteous. All of heaven shall view hell's destruction and give credit, give acclamation, give adoration, give worship to God because he has done it against sinners who refuse to hear his word. Oh, as we heard today, Today is the day of salvation. Let us esteem the time. Let us storm God's mercy throne today and beseech him, beg him, implore him to take away our sins, to wash us in the blood of Jesus Christ. O for hell worthy sinners on their way to hell, I lift up Jesus Christ to you today, as Moses has lifted up the brazen serpent in the wilderness. And all of those ready to perish, where the pangs of hell had already brought them near to death, with one eye they might look up to behold the brazen serpent, and even with one eye to behold him, they might be healed. Oh, today, today, today, hear his voice and flee from the wrath to come. Oh, today, harden not your hearts, but flee to almighty God. spare us and redeem us from hell, which we deserve 10,000 times more than anyone can imagine. No, we are not good people. No, we do not have good hearts. We have hell-worthy hearts. And we are not going lost. We are lost. unless we are arrested on the pathway to destruction, turned around, and that the blood of Jesus Christ may cleanse us whiter than the snow. Oh, storm God's mercy throne today. Today, if you hear his voice, harden not your hearts. Amen.