92SermonsofJonathanEdwards (continued)
theirs, as His majesty is greater. Luke 12:4-5, "I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear Him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear Him."
2. It is the "fury" of His wrath that you are exposed to. We often read of the fury of God; as in Isa. 59:18, "According to what they have done, so will He repay wrath to His enemies and retribution to His foes." So Isa. 66:15, "See, the LORD is coming with fire, and His chariots are like a whirlwind; He will bring down His anger with fury, and His rebuke with flames of fire." And in many other places. So, Rev. 19:15, we read of "the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty." The words are exceedingly terrible. If it had only been said, "the wrath of God," the words would have implied that which is infinitely dreadful: but it is the "fury of the wrath of God." The fury of God! the fierceness of Jehovah! O how dreadful that must be! Who can utter or conceive what such expressions carry in them?
But it is also "the fury of the wrath of God Almighty." As though there would be a very great manifestation of His almighty power in what the fury of His wrath should inflict; as though omnipotence should be as it were enraged, and exerted, as men exert their strength in the fury of their wrath. Oh! then, what will be the consequence! What will become of the poor man or woman that shall suffer it! Whose hands 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, that yet remain in an unregenerate state. That God will execute the fury of His anger, implies, that He will inflict wrath without any pity. When God looks upon the inexpressible circumstances of your case, and sees your torment to be so vastly disproportioned to 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 withhold the executions of His wrath, or in the least lighten His hand; there shall be no moderation or mercy, nor will God stop His destroying wind; be will have no regard to your welfare, nor be at all careful for fear that you should suffer too much in any other sense, than only that you shall "not suffer beyond what strict justice requires."
Nothing shall be withheld, because it is too intense for you to bear. Ezek. 8:18, "Therefore I will deal with them in anger; I will not look on them with pity or spare them. Although they shout in my ears, I will not listen to 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 the day of mercy is past, your most pitiful and sorrowful cries and shrieks will be in vain; you will be totally lost and thrown away by God, and He will have no regard for your welfare. God will have no other use for you, but for you to suffer misery; you shall for no other purpose; for your body will be a body of wrath designed for destruction; and there will be no other use of your body, but to be filled full of wrath. God will be so far from pitying you when you cry to Him, that it is said He will only "laugh and mock," Prov. 1:25-31,
Since you ignored all my advice and would not accept my rebuke, I in turn will laugh at your disaster; I will mock when calamity overtakes you--when calamity overtakes you like a storm, when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind, when distress and trouble overwhelm you. Then they will call to me but I will not answer; they will look for me but will not find me. Since they hated knowledge and did not choose to fear the LORD, since they would not accept my advice and spurned my rebuke, they will eat the fruit of their ways and be filled with the fruit of their schemes.
How awful are those words, Isa. 63:3, which are the words of the great God, "I have trodden the winepress alone; I trampled them in my anger and trod them down in my wrath; their blood spattered my garments, and I stained all my clothing." It is perhaps impossible to conceive of words that carry in them greater manifestations of these