Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

“Their foot shall slide in due time.” —Deuteronomy 32:35

In this verse the vengeance of God is threatened on the wicked, unbelieving Israelites who were God's visible people and who lived under means of grace. Notwithstanding all God's wonderful works that He had wrought toward that people, they remained, as expressed in verse 28, void of counsel, having no understanding in them; and that, under all the cultivations of heaven, brought forth bitter and poisonous fruit as in the two verses preceding the text.

The expression that 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 that those wicked Israelites were exposed to.

1. 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's coming upon them, being represented by their foot's sliding. The same is expressed in Psalm 73:18: "Surely thou didst set them in slippery places: thou castedst them down into destruction."

2. 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 73:18-19: "Surely thou didst set them in slippery places: thou castedst them down into destruction. How are they brought into desolation, as in a moment!"

3. Another thing implied is that they are liable to fall of themselves, without being thrown down by the hand of another; as he that stands or walks on slippery ground needs nothing but his own weight to throw him down.

4. 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 to destruction. As he that stands in such slippery declining ground on the edge of a pit that he cannot stand alone, when he is let go he immediately falls and is lost.

The observation from the words that I would now insist upon is this, "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, restrained by no obligation, hindered by no manner of difficulty, any more 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 following considerations.

1. 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 that 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 against 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, and before whom the rocks are thrown down.

2. 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. Yea, on the contrary, justice calls aloud for an infinite punishment of their sins. Divine justice says of the three that brings forth such grapes of Sodom: "Cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground?" (Luke 13:7). The sword of divine justice is every moment brandished over their heads, and it is nothing but the hand of arbitrary mercy and God's mere will that holds it back.

3. They are already under a sentence of condemnation to hell. They not only justly deserve to be cast down thither, 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. "He that believeth not is condemned already" (John 3:18). So that every unconverted man properly belongs to hell; that is his place; from thence he is. "Ye are from beneath" (John 8:23); and thither he is bound. It is the place that justice, and God's Word, and the sentence of His unchangeable law, assigns to him.

4. 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 they do not go down to hell at each moment is not because God, in whose power they are, is not then very angry with them — as angry as He is with many of those miserable creatures He is now tormenting in hell and do there feel and bear the fierceness of His wrath. Yea, God is a great deal more angry with great numbers that are now on earth, yea, doubtless, with many that are now in this congregation, that, it may be, are at ease and quiet, than He is with many of those that are now in the flames of hell.

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, though they may imagine Him to be so. The wrath of God burns against them; their damnation does not slumber; the furnace is now hot, ready to receive them; the flames do now rage and glow. The glittering sword is whet and held over them, and the pit has opened her mouth under them.

5. The devil stands ready to fall upon them, and seize them as his own, at what moment God shall permit him. They belong to him; he has their souls in his possession, and under his dominion. The Scripture represents them as his goods (Luke 11:21). The devils watch them; they are ever by them, at their right hand; they stand waiting for them, like greedy hungry lions that see their prey and expect to have it, but are for the present kept back. If God would withdraw His hand by which they are restrained, they would in one moment fly upon their 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.

6. There are in the souls of wicked men those hellish principles reigning that would presently kindle and flame out into hell-fire, 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 seeds of hell-fire. These principles are active and powerful, exceedingly violent in their 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, the same enmity does in the hearts of damned souls, and would beget the same torments in them as they do in them.

The souls of the wicked are compared to the troubled sea (Isaiah 57:20). For the present God restrains their wickedness by His mighty power, as He does the raging waves of the troubled sea, saying, "Hitherto shalt thou come, and 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, nothing else would be needed to make the soul perfectly miserable. The corruption of the heart of man is a thing that is immoderate and boundless in its fury. While wicked men live here, it is like fire pent up by God's restraints, when if it were let loose it would set on fire the course of nature. And as the heart is now a sink of sin, so, if sin were 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 a natural man that he is now in health, and that he does not see how he might go out of the world by any accident, and that there is no visible danger in any respect in his circumstances. The manifold and continual experience of the world in all ages shows that 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 discern 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 need 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 there are of sinners going out of the world are in God's hands and so absolutely subject to His power and determination, that it does not depend at all less on the mere will of God, whether sinners shall at any moment go to hell, than if means were never made use of, or at all concerned in the case.

8. 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 also bear testimony. There is 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? "How dieth the wise man? as the fool" (Ecclesiastes 2:16).

9. All wicked men's pains and the contrivances they use to escape hell, while they continue to reject Christ and so remain wicked men, does not secure them from hell one moment. Almost every natural man that hears of hell flatters himself that he shall escape it. He depends on 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 but few saved, and that the bigger part of men that have died heretofore are 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 care that shall be effectual and to order matters so for himself as not to fail.          

But the foolish children of men miserably delude themselves in their own schemes and in their confidence in their own strength and wisdom; they trust to nothing but a shadow. The bigger part of those that heretofore have lived under the same means of grace, and are now dead, are undoubtedly gone to hell. It was not because they did not lay out matters as well for themselves to secure their own escape. If it were so that we could speak with them and could inquire of them whether they expected when alive, and when they heard about hell ever to be subjects of that misery, we doubtless should hear one and another reply.

"No, I never intended to come here. I had laid out matters otherwise in my mind. 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, and in that manner. It came as a thief; 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. When I was saying peace and safety, then sudden destruction came upon me."

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, in whom all the promises are yea and amen. But surely they have no interest in the promises of the covenant of grace that are not the children of the covenant, do not believe in any of the promises of the covenant, and have no interest in the mediator of the covenant.

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 it is that natural men are held in the hand of God over the pit of hell. They have deserved the fiery pit and are already sentenced to it. God is dreadfully provoked; His anger is as great toward them as toward 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 fain lay hold on them and swallow them up. The fire pent up in their own hearts is struggling to break out. 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.

Application
The use of this awful subject may be for an awakening of unconverted persons to a conviction of their danger. This is the case of every one of you who are out 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, and you have nothing to stand on, 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 probably are not conscious of that. You find you are kept out of hell but do not see the hand of God in it. You 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 instead those 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 who is suspended in it.

Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead and to tend downward with great weight and pressure toward hell. If God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, your own care and prudence, 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 one moment. You are a burden to it; the creation 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 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, were made for men to serve God with, do not willingly subserve to any other purpose, and grown when they are abused to purposes so directly contrary to their nature and end. The world would spew you out, were it not for the sovereign hand of Him who has 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 the restraining 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, your destruction would come like a whirlwind, and you would be like the chaff of 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 is its course when once it is let loose.

It is true that judgment against your evil work 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 continually rising and waxing more and more mighty; and there is nothing but the mere pleasure of God that holds back the waters 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, and the fiery floods of the fierceness and wrath of God would rush forth with inconceivable fury and would come upon you with omnipotent power. If your strength were ten thousand times greater than it is, yea, ten thousand times greater than the strength of the stoutest, sturdiest 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 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 are all you that never passed under a great change of heart by the mighty power of the Spirit of God upon your souls. All that were never born again, made new creatures, and raised from being dead in sin to a state of new, and before altogether unexperienced light and life (however you may have reformed your life in many things, and may have had religious affections, and may keep up a form of religion in your families and closets, and in the house of God, and may be strict in it), you are thus in the hands of an angry God. It is nothing but His 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 like circumstances with you see that it was so with them. Destruction came suddenly upon most of them, when they expected nothing of it, and while they were saying, "Peace and safety." Now they see that those things they depended on 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 toward you burns like fire; He looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire. He is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in His sight. You are ten thousand times as abominable in His eyes, as the most hateful and venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended Him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince, and yet it is nothing but His hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment.

It is 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. There is no other reason to be given why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the 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 have sat here in the house of God, provoking His pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending His solemn worship. Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down into hell.

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. You have no interest in any mediator, nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do to induce God to spare you one moment.

And consider here more particularly 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 of absolute monarchs that have the possessions and lives of their subjects wholly in their power to be disposed of at their mere will. "The fear of a king is as the roaring of a lion: whoso provoketh him to anger sinneth against his own soul" (Proverbs 20:2). 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, and when clothed in their greatest terrors are but feeble, despicable worms of the dust in comparison to the great and almighty Creator and King of heaven and earth. It is but little that they can do when most enraged and when they have exerted the utmost of their fury. All the kings of the earth before God are as grasshoppers. They are nothing and less than nothing. Both 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. "And I say unto you my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom you shall fear: Fear him, which after He hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear Him" (Luke 12:4-5).

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