Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (Lent 27, 2024)

Fire and brimstone preaching at its most classic form is found in “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” a sermon written in 1741 by renowned theologian Jonathan Edwards during the First Great Awakening.

There are modern people who hate the idea that God is angry at sin. A while back, prolific women’s ministry writer Beth Moore attacked Jonathan Edwards for his style on Twitter (now X) and was ratioed, even seemingly “Community Noted” to the nth degree before they were called Community Notes.

In particular she hated, “The God that holds you over the Pit of Hell, much as one holds a Spider, or some loathsome Insect, over the Fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his Wrath towards you burns like Fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the Fire; he is of purer Eyes than to bear to have you in his Sight; you are ten thousand Times so abominable in his Eyes as the most hateful venomous Serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn Rebel did his Prince: and yet ‘tis nothing but his Hand that holds you from falling into the Fire every Moment.”

She tried to explain her way out of it. “Yes, Jesus who could warn the ever-living fire out of you,” Moore added, “but Jesus who could tell you everything you’d ever done yet somehow, in doing so, be alight with such holy love toward you, that his confrontation gives you dignity you need to feel like maybe, in him—in his eyes—you’re worth saving. And you run into town and tell everyone you can find, Come and meet who I have met!”

Her warm and fuzzy lovey God who could be “alright” loving you, giving you dignity as a sinner, and that YOU are “worth saving” is precisely the kind of Christian-Lite Barneyesque, “I love you, you love me, we’re a happy family” that totally misses how truly condemnable we all are on account of our sin. Yes, Beth, condemnable… in God’s eyes.

In further trying to rescue her earlier tweet, she digs a deeper hole writing, “I’m no big theologian, but I just don’t think you’re a spider. And I don’t think God abhors you.”

Seriously, why does Hell exist if God only sees pretty good people in simple need of dignity? Why would any experience Hell? Doesn’t the mere existence of Hell speak to how God feels about sin in rebellious, rejecting, reviling sinners? Or does she deny the existence of Hell as some theologians do? Big mistake to underestimate how much God hates sin.

He hates sin enough to punish it and banish it from His presence (Psalm 5:4-6, 9-10). Eternally. But He loves His Image in us to have done everything (not just everything in His power implying it’s insufficient for the task), but everything necessary so that we would never have to experience Hell. His favor is upon the righteous (Psalm 5:7-8,11-12). That’s the eternal, infinite power of grace.

Exercise: A story came out recently about various car brands (GM, Ford, Subaru, Honda…) sending driving data to LexisNexis which reports it to your insurance companies which raise your rates depending on what it reports. God doesn’t need an electronic tattler to report our infractions. What if all of us lived such good lives that our infractions were nearly non-existent? We’d still need the covering of Christ to avoid Hell because falling at any one point in our lives is enough sin to make us sinners.

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Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014.
Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations. We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17.
ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ. It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.
Lent 2018, we explored the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We asked and answered the questions “Why?” from the movie Life of Pi as we discovered the uniqueness of Jesus Christ in a world of many faiths.
Lent 2019 gave us a deeper window into Easter “More to the Easter Story” since we miss so much when we rely only on a superficial understanding of the work of Christ. These devotionals are archived beginning March 6, 2019.
Our Lent 2020 devotional series offered prayer points surrounding “Be Thou My Vision” and were aimed at helping us to see God for who He is. The full set of devotionals are archived beginning February 26, 2020.
The theme for 2021 Lent Devotionals was how to live between two worlds while waiting for Christ’s return. Into the gap between the City of Man and its fixation upon sin and the City of God with its demand for holiness, two words minister peace: But God. Praise God for His intervention! They are archived beginning February 17, 2021.
Revelation in 40 devotionals for 2022 offered 40 vignettes, scenes, concepts, and thoughts to inspire us to read the Book of Revelation as it is written and to go deeper. They are archived beginning March 2, 2022.
Last year’s devotionals “Created to Display His Image” explored what it truly means to be made in God’s Image and the profound significance of that fact. They are archived beginning February 22, 2023.