Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 602
Delivered on Sunday Evening, November 20, 1864, by C. H. Spurgeon, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington
Genesis 19:27,28.
EARLY in the morning Abraham sought that favored spot where but yesterday God had been pleased to manifest Himself and where he had been favored with a season of extraordinary communion. Where should the Believer go, but to that choice place, dear to his heart, where he has communed with the Lord?—
“Who that knows the worth of prayer, But wishes to be often there?”
It is a high privilege, the highest which mortals can enjoy, to talk with God, to plead with Him, to use arguments and to prevail. Such Divine Grace had Abraham found. No marvel that he goes back to the place where God had thus drawn near to him. Doubtless one reason why he rose early and went to the place and looked towards Sodom was an anxious desire to know how his prayers had speeded.
You remember he put a last “perhaps” to the Lord—“Perhaps ten shall be found there, And He said, I will not destroy it for ten’s sake.” He hopes, perhaps, that he need not go any further. He stops, for he feels sure in his heart that there must be ten righteous there! He turns his eyes to the quarter of the horizon where Sodom and Gomorrah should stand. So, when you have prayed, look out for answers. Elijah said to his servant, “Go and look towards the sea”—so say to your hopes—“Go and look towards the sea.” If you have asked for rain, expect a cloud. If you have sought mercy, expect that God will stretch out His hand and bestow it upon you.
But God does not always answer His children’s prayers just as they would desire. Besides, His children are sometimes slack in asking and therefore they do not get what they desire. So Abraham, as he looked towards Sodom—instead of seeing the verdant well-watered plain and the roofs and spires of the city, saw nothing but black smoke and a lurid glare going up to Heaven like the smoke of a furnace.
It is remarkable that he does not appear to have observed the storm as it came down from Heaven! From this fact we may infer how rapid the destruction of the cities must have been! God rained fire out of Heaven upon Sodom—it seems to have been done in a moment. The whole plain was destroyed. And all that Abraham saw after he rose up, which was probably just at sunrise, was merely the smoke that followed the conflagration.
So does God drive His enemies away. As wax is melted before the fire, as the smoke is driven before the wind, so does the enemy perish before the breath of God when He comes forth out of His hiding place to punish sin. Can you now picture to yourselves the reverent Patriarch, as he leans upon his staff and looks with wondering gaze towards the smoking furnace? What must have been his thoughts? What a spectacle for him to gaze upon—from the very spot where he had held communion with God!
Perhaps he could not have looked upon it from any other spot. He would have been too much afraid, too full of trembling. But there he felt safe. Standing where the Lord had talked with him he felt secure. And he could look even into that gruesome glare and that terrible blackness without dismay.
And now I want to summon you, my dear Christian Friends, to the scene of your own most hallowed privileges—to the spot, as it were, on which Divine Grace has been shown most clearly to your souls and intercessions have been poured out most freely from your hearts. From there I would have you lift up your eyes. To what, do you ask, would I draw your attention? Ah, then I want you to look upon the smoke of the torments of lost spirits. I want believing eyes to gaze upon that place, “where their worm dies not, and the fire is not quenched.”
Only mind that you stand in the place where God has communed with you, beneath the Cross, where the blood shall drop upon you and you shall feel the sense of pardoned sin! From no other place can we view the wrath of God with proper and profitable emotions. But standing there our spirits shall be chastened, our souls comforted and with tears standing in our eyes—tears of gratitude and contrition—we shall venture to look upon that dark and terrible gulf where the wicked lie and shall derive some profit from the sight, even as Abraham doubtless did.
First, then, tonight, let me suggest the emotions which should be awakened in the Christian’s spirit when he takes a view of the wrath to come. Secondly, let me gather up some lessons which God teaches to His people and to the world from the doom of the wicked. And then, in closing, let me turn your eyes another way to a yet more awful display of Divine vengeance—even more awful, I say—than that which is to be perceived in Tophet, where lost souls are shut up.
I. WITH WHAT EMOTIONS OUGHT WE TO GAZE UPON THE TORMENTS OF UNGODLY AND IMPENITENT SOULS? Certainly it should always be with an humble submission to the Divine will. The assurance that God is just, even in the midst of His hot displeasure, must ever be cherished. The Judge of all the earth cannot but do right. Though He is terrible and dreadful in His anger, as a consuming fire, yet is He still our God forever and ever, full of goodness and full of Truth.