Holiness of God - Chapter 9

God in the Hand of Angry Sinners

Most famous sermon is probably Jonathan Edwards "Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God." But, this sermon probably doesn't have much place in churches today. "Ours is an upbeat generation with the accent on self-improvement and a broad-minded view of sin." We tend to think that "His love and mercy override His holy justice." And so we don't want to think He possesses wrath.

But, by truly understanding God's holiness we must see that God is angry with us because we violate His holiness and He does possess justice. This is what Jonathan Edwards was getting at, not to guilt trip his listeners but to "awakening them to the peril they faced if they remained unconverted."

"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." 

Edwards states that a holy God must also be a wrathful God.

1. God's wrath is divine. Human wrath terminates, but God's wrath can go on forever.
2. God's wrath is fierce. God's wrath is a consuming rage against the unrepentant. 
3. God's wrath is everlasting. There is no end.

And yet this doesn't quicken us with an urgency to believe nor tell others. Our problem is we think the best of ourselves and think the way we get out of judgement is by living a good life. We have changed God into our idol and made him something we are more comfortable with.

Edwards had a sequel sermon called "Men's Naturally God's Enemies." Sproul would say, "God in the Hands of Angry Sinners." "If we are unconverted, one thing is absolutely certain: We hate God."  And in turn we are God's enemies. We have all been at this point. Romans 5:10 declares, "When we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son." Thus, we have a need for reconciliation. Our tendency is to flee from Him. What we often want from God is only the riches; only the gifts and the good stuff. We want everything our way. For natural man God "represents the highest possible threat to our sinful desires." 


Those that have been reconciled are friends of God. Yet "our natural human natures were not annihilated."