Sunday, 29th January, 2023
Bible Reading: Amos 9:2, Deuteronomy 32:35
Memory Verse: Say to them, ‘As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, people of Israel?’ Ezekiel 33:11 (NIV)
“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” is a sermon written by the American theologian Jonathan Edwards, preached to his own congregation in Northampton, Massachusetts, to profound effect, and again on July 8, 1741 in Enfield, Connecticut. The preaching of this sermon was the catalyst for the First Great Awakening.
In accordance with traditional sermon structure, Jonathan Edwards opens “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” with the two Biblical readings on which the sermon is based. One passage, from the Book of Amos 9:2, is about God’s ability to find sinners and take them to hell no matter where they are. The other, from Deuteronomy 32:35, simply says, “Their foot shall slide in due time.”
Edwards begins the body of his sermon by contextualizing these quotations. Even though God was kind to the Israelites, they betrayed him, and therefore God brought vengeance upon them. The quote from Deuteronomy is God’s threat of vengeance, and Edwards proceeds to analyze the implications of this quote in depth.
First, he notes that the quote implies that the Israelites always risked “destruction” (damnation), just as someone walking on a slippery surface is always in danger of falling.
Second, he notes that a fall on a slippery surface is always sudden and unexpected—destruction might come to sinners at any time.
Third, Edwards clarifies that when a person falls on a slippery surface, the fall is due only to their own weight (or, metaphorically, their sin)—they do not need to be pushed.
Fourth, Edwards changes the metaphor from a person on a slippery surface to a person held by the hand of God on a slippery slope with a pit at the bottom. This metaphor shows that it’s God’s hand alone that keeps a sinner from hell, and when God lets go, the weight of their sins will drag them inevitably into hell.
Dear brethren, have you considered your life in the light of this all-time relevant message? What are you still doing in the miry clay of sin? God is a God of mercy, and at the same time, He is a God of vengeance. Again and again, you keep backsliding into your old sin. When will you ever take a rigid stand for Jesus?
Before you exhaust your deposit of mercy in your spiritual bank account; before you make God angry, come totally surrendered to Him today. Tomorrow may be very late. Drunkenness, hard drugs, pornography, masturbation, stealing, lying, incest, and all other works of flesh that separates a man from His Creator must be renounced completely.
#ManifestationThroughSurenderness
Quote: Destruction might come to sinners at any time. Repent genuinely today
Prophetic Decree: Today, the grip of sin breaks over your life, in Jesus’ name.
Prayer Focus
1. Thank you Father for your unfailingly mercies.
2. I refuse to take your mercies for granted in Jesus’ name.
3. I annul every covenant with hell, in the name of Jesus.
4. O Lord, please deliver me from the sin that easily besets me, in Jesus’ name.
5. I refuse to fall irredeemably under the weight of my own sin, in Jesus’ name.
BIBLE IN ONE YEAR: Genesis 48-50