Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 682
Delivered on Sunday Morning, March 25, 1866
“It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” Hebrews 10:31.
You will most cheerfully bear me witness that my most frequent subjects are the mercy and abundant loving kindness of our God in Jesus Christ, and that it is my favorite employment to invite the very chief of sinners to come to Jesus Christ with the assurance that He will cast out none who come to Him, but will assuredly give to them eternal life. It is not to my honor to say so, but still you know how seldom I have forced upon your attention those terrible subjects which concern the state of the lost in Hell. I have felt more at home in using the drawing of mercy than the driving of terror, and I can most honestly plead innocence of any charge of delighting in declaring the torments of the finally impenitent, or of entering upon the discussion of the miseries of the lost with eagerness and enjoyment.
He who searches all hearts knows that under an overwhelming sense of urgency and necessity, and purely out of love to the souls of men I bring before you the text which I have announced. The burden of the Lord hangs heavily upon me. I must deliver myself of the blood of some of you who are living in impenitence and who will probably die in it, and who, if you die unwarned, having often listened to my voice, may be able to reproach me in another world if I do not faithfully and earnestly bear my solemn testimony concerning the wrath to come.
Beloved, we know by observation in our pastoral work that while the mercy of God draws many to Him, there are some who are more affected at first by the terrors of the Law. We have many, now, who are members of this Church walking in holiness and in the fear of God. They listened to sermons upon the softer and more tender topics and were not affected. But when they came under the heavy blows of the hammer of God’s Law their flinty hearts were broken into shivers and, by God’s Grace, before long they turned unto the hand which smote them! God has ordained both the terrors of the Law and the tenderness of the Gospel—that by means of both—men may be saved.
Gospel farming employs many implements, and there are some lands which will never yield a harvest without much more exercising with the plow than others may require. The light of Tabor and the fiery flashes of Sinai are equally Divine and so long as we learn to rest in Calvary it little matters by what means, whether tender or terrible, we may have been brought there. The complete ministry leaves no revealed Truth of God unuttered, but looks for a blessing upon the Word as a whole. The themes of mercy need, in order fully to manifest their brightness, the dark background of the terrors of the Law—for men will never value a Redeemer so well as when they have a very clear consciousness of the ruin from which He has redeemed them.
The preciousness of mercy is best known by those who discern the terror of justice. If we really feel that God is angry with the sinner and loathes and hates his sin and will certainly take fearful vengeance upon him on account of it, we shall the better understand the force of that Divine mercy which led Him to give His own dear Son, and which now leads Him to cry unto the Sons of men, “Turn! Turn! Why will you die, O house of Israel?”
In addition to these considerations I have been urged to bring this subject before you because the assaults which are now made against the Gospel frequently assail the doctrine of future punishment. It was once the business of infidels to revile the terrible sanctions of the Divine Law—but they may now suspend their exertions, for certain clergymen of the Church of England are doing the work most effectually. No, more—there are certain Dissenting ministers, successors of good and venerable men, who are never more at home than when they are making sport of the terrors of God!
Just now it seems to jump with the humor of certain philosophic schools to depreciate our God as a Judge, and to magnify a supposititious Divine fatherhood which is the offspring of their own effeminate imaginations and flesh-pleasing dreams. It therefore behooves the servants of the Most High and Righteous God to confess the faith which they have received and not be ashamed of it, whatever disgrace may cover them.
I. The text asserts that “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God,” and our first statement shall be, that SURELY IT IS SO, as we may certainly gather from several considerations.
1. It must be a fearful thing for impenitent sinners to fall into God’s hands when we remember the Character of God as revealed in His judgments of old. Taking the Scriptures as our guide we see in them a revelation of God differing very greatly from that which is so current today. The God of Abraham, as revealed in the Old Testament, is as different from the universal Father of modern dreams as He is from Apollo or Bacchus. Let me remind you that ever since the day when Adam fell, with but two exceptions, the whole of the human race has been subjected to the pains of sickness and of death.