1. Infallibly certain —
[Sinners imagine that God cannot inflict punishment : they suppose that if not inconsistent with his justice, it would at least be contrary to his acknowledged goodness and benignity. They think that, when the time comes, he will relent, and spare them. But, in our text, he meets that error, and declares, " The Lord will not spare him." " I have spared him long enough," the Lord will say: " I bore with all his wickedness for many years :" "I waited long to be gracious to him :" " I called to him, but he would not hear ; I entreated him, but he refused to hearken : and therefore he now may call, and I will not hear ; I will even laugh at his calamity, and mock when his fear is come." Now God would " repent him of the evil which he has thought to bring" on any sinner : but how inflexible he will be in that day, the prophet has abundantly declared s. The sinner may " knock at the door which is shut against him, saying, Lord, Lord, open to me : but I will say, Depart from me, I never knew thee, thou worker of iniquity."]
2. Inexpressibly severe —
[What must it be to have " the anger and the jealousy of Almighty God " incensed, and so incensed, as to be, as it were, " smoking against us? " But, to form a just idea of the sinner's doom, we must take all the most terrific passages of the word of God, and contemplate all the images contained in them, and then conceive of all of them combined to fill up the measure of his misery. Oh, if we think of " that lake that burneth with fire and brimstone," " where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched," where there is nothing but " weeping, and wail- ing, and gnashing of teeth," and " the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever," what an idea does it all give us of the judgments that await the impenitent transgressor ! Yet these, yea and "all the curses that are written in the sacred volume" from one end of it even to the other, shall come upon him, and shall " lie and abide upon him for ever and ever." Once, if he had sought for mercy through the Lord Jesus Christ, his name might have been " written in the book of life ;" but now " God will blot out his name from under hea- ven," and it shall be found registered only with those of the devil and his angels.
We are well aware that these truths are unwelcome to the generality of men: but it is infinitely better to contemplate them in time, than to be left to experience them in eternity .]
Let us learn then from this subject,
1. To compassionate the ungodly world —
s Ezek. viii. 18. and xxiv. 14.