The most famous and well-known sermon ever delivered in America is Jonathan Edwards’ Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Way back in 1741 Edwards gave this sermon at a church in Enfield, Connecticut. I have read that Enfield was not an especially spiritual place. Nothing special on that front was happening there at the time. Edwards reportedly read the sermon he had written down word for word.
As the sermon went forward, people in attendance began shouting out “What shall I do to be saved? O, I am going to hell!” People came forward to the pulpit. One report says people begged him to stop. At one point Edwards asked everyone to be quiet so he could continue. The anguish of suddenly realizing who God is and who they were was upon them.
You can read this great sermon on the Internet. Just type in the title above and hit search.
What does the message all come down to? Read and think about this paragraph taken from the sermon. It goes right to the heart of the message, to the point of who God the Father and Jesus and human beings indeed are and the disastrous position any are in who have not been born anew.
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. Thus all you that never passed under a great change of heart, by the mighty power of the Spirit of God upon your souls; all you that were never born again, and made new creatures, and raised from being dead in sin, to a state of new, and before altogether unexperienced light and life, are in the hands of an angry God.
Without a person’s being born again, without their accepting Jesus and thus without his saving grace standing between them and God the Father, they are in the hands of an angry God. That is God who hates sin, who has always hated sin. Early in Genesis 6 God looked at the world, saw the behavior of people, and decided he would limit man’s days to 120 years. Just a couple verses later he saw that every inclination of the thoughts of a man’s heart was only evil all the time. He decided to eliminate all humans. God grieved that he had made man, but then Noah found favor in the eyes of God, and God spared Noah and his family. Every other person on earth was killed in the flood.
God hates sin. He hates evil. Of course he does. The only hope any human has is in the Lord Jesus Christ and what he did for them on the cross. And to benefit from that hope, a person must recognize Jesus for who he is and accept Jesus as their Lord.
All those people who are not born again, who have not believed truly in the Lord Jesus, are in the hands of an angry God. It is just a matter of time until his wrath is poured out on them. And be assured, unless they change their ways and come to the Lord Jesus, it will be…for eternity. Right now the mass of humanity is in this lost group. And time is running out.
To paraphrase Edwards’ closing lines, the wrath of Almighty God is now undoubtedly hanging over a great part of humanity. Let everyone fly out of Sodom. Haste and escape for your lives. (That escaping of course means to seek Jesus, change what you have been doing, realize who he is, be born again, accept him as your Lord.).
I know that most of the readers of this publication are indeed born again believers. But I also know that each of you know many among your relatives, family, friends, work associates, neighbors, who are not. God reached those people in Enfield that day back in 1741. Perhaps he is ready through you to reach those you care about. Give or send them a copy of this article. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you in speaking to them about Jesus and their great need. Ask him to arrange the time and place, to guide you to all such encounters he would have you have anywhere.
Keep Your Eyes on Jesus!
(October 2017)
Copyright © 2017 by John Newlin
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