Good Morning! If you are getting this, then you know it's Starving Second Saturday where we set aside some time and fast and pray for our friends and family who so desperately need Jesus.
I am reminded this morning of just how desperately they need Christ as I think of the great sermon delivered by Jonathan Edwards in 1741 called "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." It is a very powerful message at just how precarious the lives of men are who are not covered by the blood of Jesus.
Most of the sermon's text consists of ten considerations:
1. God may cast wicked men into hell at any given moment.
2. The Wicked deserve to be cast into hell. Divine justice does not prevent God from destroying the Wicked at any moment.
3. The Wicked, at this moment, suffer under God's condemnation to Hell.
4. The Wicked, on earth - at this very moment - suffer the torments of Hell. The Wicked must not think, simply because they are not physically in Hell, that God (in Whose hand the Wicked now reside) is not - at this very moment - as angry with them as He is with those miserable creatures He is now tormenting in hell, and who - at this very moment - do feel and bear the fierceness of His wrath.
5. At any moment God shall permit him, Satan stands ready to fall upon the Wicked and seize them as his own.
6. If it were not for God's restraints, there are, in the souls of wicked men, hellish principles reigning which, presently, would kindle and flame out into hellfire.
7. Simply because there are not visible means of death before them, at any given moment, the Wicked should not, therefore, feel secure.
8. Simply because it is natural to care for oneself or to think that others may care for them, men should not think themselves safe from God's wrath.
9. All that wicked men may do to save themselves from Hell's pains shall afford them nothing if they continue to reject Christ.
10. God has never promised to save us from Hell, except for those contained in Christ through the covenant of Grace.
I was certainly moved by the sermon after reading it at its full length. God's grace alone had kept me from that eternal destruction, and it is his grace that keeps our lost and rebellious ones out today.
For the last couple of months, as I wrote about the passage from Jeremiah 29:12-13 has been on my mind. I think the Lord is saying simply just keep seeking me, give it all you have and I will be faithful to respond. He is there when I'm seeking him, when I am in prayer and in worship. It's amazing! We have an amazing God.
This week the Lord brought back to my mind the passage of 1 Peter 5:10 that says "And the God of all grace who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast." Piece by piece and day by day He is showing himself to be faithful to this promise that I had taped to my dashboard for nearly a year.
Today if He asks me "See I am doing a new thing, can you not perceive it?" I can answer with a definitive "Yes, Lord I see it!"
