Kiss the Son, lest He be angry and you perish in your rebellion, when His wrath ignites in an instant. Blessed are all who take refuge in Him.Give sincere homage to the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish on the way, for his wrath will soon be kindled. Blessed are all those who take refuge in him.Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.Kiss the son, lest he be angry, and ye perish in the way, For his wrath will soon be kindled. Blessed are all they that take refuge in him.
12 sermons cite this verse
Well, it's been said in the world there are three types of people, and only three. Those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who ask, what just happened? I wonder this morning, do you understand what's going on in this world? Do you have a lens through which to read the news or to watch it on television and all the terrifying scenes that are set before us? Do you understand what's going on in the world? The chaos, the confusions, the downright contradictions in modern man or postmodern man. Look at us today in America, the greatest nation in the world, and in one sense, the worst. No nation has such light given to it as America has received. Two great awakenings, the preaching of a faithful church for centuries since the beginning and before, were technologically brilliant. Look at the advances our scientists have made in recent years in technology and industry and farming and every other area of human study. Just think of computers for a second. …
V. WHERE DEEDS OF MERCY DO NOT PROVE THE TRUTH OF THIS, DEEDS OF JUSTICE WILL CONFIRM IT. I will say but a few sentences, but let them be caught by your ears and seized by your hearts. In this house tonight there are some of you who are not reconciled to God by the death of His Son. You have never humbled yourselves and taken the Lord's Christ to be your only hope. Now, mark this—if you will not come down by Grace, you must and shall come down by judgment! You will be humbled, Sinner, if not to penitence, then to remorse! If not to hopeful conversion, to hopeless despair! Every high look shall be brought down in the day when He shall sit upon the Great White Throne and call the quick and the dead to judgment. "Rocks, hide us! Mountains, fall upon us! Hide us from the face of Him that sits on the Throne!" Who said that? Why, the very man who once said, "Lord, I thank You that I am not as other men are." Yes, Sirs, and the very man who once said, "Who is the Lord that I should obey Him?" He it is who now cries, "Hide me, hide me from the accusing face." Behold, you despisers, wonder and perish! If you will not be humbled at the Cross, you shall be humbled at the Throne of Judgment! If mercy wins you not, judgment shall subdue you! If you will not bend, you shall break! He who will not melt in the fires of love shall be consumed in the furnace of wrath! Oh, my Hearer, what a dread alternative is this! "Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and you perish from the way when His wrath is kindled but a little! Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him!" …
into Heaven through their good deeds. You seek no mercy, you shall have none! You proudly reject it. You trust to your own righteousness—you seek to have what you merit—you shall have what you merit—but that will be to be driven forever from the Presence of God! There cannot be mercy to those who will not confess that they need mercy. There shall be no mercy in that day for those who sought no mercy here. Prayerless souls? You are graceless souls and mercy shall be denied you then! You will pray loudly enough then! Oh, how they pray in Hell! What tears and groans send they up to Heaven! They would gladly have mercy there, but Mercy's day is over—Justice has turned the key and hurled that key into the abyss where it can never be found! They are prisoners forever beneath the wrath of God! They who will not ask for it deserve not to have it. When mercy is to be had for the asking, if man turns upon his heels and refuses to ask, what shall God do but say, "Because I called and you refused—I stretched out My hand and no man regarded—I also will mock at your calamity. I will laugh when your fear comes"? There shall be no mercy for those who ask no mercy. Further, there shall in that day be no mercy for those that scoffed at Christ, denied His dignity, railed at His people, broke His Sabbath and altogether abhorred His Gospel. Oh, Sirs, you fight a desperate battle against Him who made the heavens and the earth and who is the darling Son of God! In fighting against Christ, you dash yourselves upon the bosses of Jehovah's buckler! You cast yourselves upon the point of His spear! Be wise and stop your rebellion. "Kiss the Son lest He be angry, and you perish from the way when His wrath is kindled but a little." How shall the wax contend with the fire, or the thistles wage war with the flames? Yet you are doing this, O you that rebel against Christ! You shall either break or bow. Bow, I pray you, for if not, He shall break you with a rod of iron! He shall break you in pieces like a potter's vessel. Beware, you that despise Him, lest in the day of His coming He despises your image and you utterly perish. …
And ask Him still for more." One other remark, and that is, if you don't glorify Jesus Christ willingly and cheerfully by such a trust, He will be glorified even in your condemnation! In the day of His appearing, you that have heard the Gospel—for I speak to you, only, if you reject Him, you will have yet to minister to His honor. "Kiss the Son, lest He be angry and you perish from the way if His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him." But if you trust Him not, here is the alternative—"He shall break the nations with a rod of iron, He shall dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel." How stands it with you? Will you be able to endure that iron rod? Will you be able to endure the breaking, when first the body shall be broken, and then the soul to shivers, like a potter's vessel? Be wise, therefore, oh you kings and you men, sons of the earth! Be wise, bow before Him, accept Him as your King! God will thus be glorified by the work of Christ, and if it is not so, He will be glorified by the aid of justice, which may the Lord forbid in the case of any one of us! Amen.
Shall I tell you why, when you hear of the Cross of Christ and yet reject it, you will be ashamed? You will be ashamed then of your sins. You are not able, perhaps, to boast of them, now, but you will be ashamed to think, then, that they shall be published. Men are afraid, now, to have some things put in the newspaper, but what will it be when God will gazette your private sins, when He shall publish to the whole assembled world of every age, to Heaven, earth and Hell, the sins which you have committed—when they shall be read out so that all shall hear and all your filth be discovered? What shame will this revelation of secret things produce! And what will be your shame when the hypocritical profession which you have made shall also be laid bare? Then shall those who were open sinners laugh you to scorn and say of you, as the Prophet pictures the kings saying of the great monarch of Babylon, "Have you become like one of us? Have you also become weak as we, and covered with shame?" Most of all, perhaps, will you be ashamed when you see the very people you despised reigning in triumph—when you see the saints whom you laughed at sitting at the right hand of the Judge—those fools who disdain this world's pleasures now entering into everlasting pleasure! And you, the wise man, who took the bird in the hand and would not wait for the bird in the bush—now rewarded for it all by receiving the very worst things, inasmuch as you had your best things, first, and must now have your worst things, last! …
1. The torment and misery, of which natural men are in danger, are exceedingly great in themselves. They are great beyond any of our words or thoughts. When we speak of them, our words are swallowed up. W e say they are great, and exceedingly great, and very dreadful. But when we have used all the words we can to express them, how faint is the idea that is raised in our minds in comparison with the reality! This misery will appear very dreadful, if we consider what calamities meet together in it. In it the wicked are deprived of all good, separated from God and all fruits of his mercy. In this world they enjoy many of the streams of God’s goodness. But in the future world they will have no more smiles of God, no more manifestations of his mercy by benefits, by warnings, by calls and invitations. He will never more manifest his mercy by the exercise of patience and lone-suffering, by waiting to be gracious; no more use any forbearance with them for their good; no more exercise his mercy by strivings of his Spirit, by sending messengers and using means. They will have no more testimonies of the fruits of God’s goodness in enjoying food and raiment, and comfortable dwellings and convenient accommodations, nor any of the comforts of this life; no more manifestations of his mercy by suffering them to draw near to him with their prayers, to pray for what they need. God will exercise no pity towards them, no regard for their welfare. Cut off from all the comforts of this life, shut out of heaven, they will see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven; but they shall be turned away from God and from all good into the blackness of darkness, into the pit of hell, into that great receptacle, which God has provided on purpose to cast into it the filthy, and polluted, and abominable of the universe. They will be in a most dreadful condition; they will have no friends. God will be their enemy, angels and the spirits of the just will be their enemies, devils and damned spirits will be their enemies. They will be hated with perfect hatred, will have none to pity them, none to bemoan their case, or to be any comfort to them. It appears that the state of the damned will be exceedingly dreadful in that they will suffer the wrath of God, executed to the full upon them, poured out without mixture. They shall bear the wrath of the Almighty. They shall know how dreadful the wrath of an Almighty God is. Now none knows, none can conceive. Psalm xc. 11. “Who knoweth the power of thine anger?” Then they shall feel the weight of God’s wrath. In this world they have the wrath of God abiding on them, but then it will be executed upon them; now they are the objects of it, but then they will be the subjects of it. Now it hangs over them, but then it shall fall upon them in its full weight without any alleviation, or any moderation or restraint. Their souls and their bodies shall then be filled full with the wrath of God. Wicked men shall be as full of wrath as any thing that glows in the midst of a furnace is of fire. The wrath of God is infinitely more dreadful than fire. Fire, yea the fiercest fire, is but an image and shadow of it. The vessels of wrath shall be filled up with wrath to the brim. Yea, they shall be plunged into a sea of wrath. And therefore hell is compared to a lake of fire and brimstone, because there wicked men are overwhelmed and swallowed up in wrath, as men who are cast into a lake or sea, are swallowed up in water. O who can conceive of the dreadfulness of the wrath of an Almighty God! Everything in God is answerable to his infinite greatness. When God shows mercy, he shows mercy like a God. His love is infinitely desirable, because it is the love of God. And so when he executes wrath it is like a God. This God will pour out without mixture. Revelations xiv. 10. “The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb.” No mixture of mercy or pity; nothing thrown into the cup of wrath to assuage or moderate it. Job xxvii. 22. “God shall cast upon him and not spare.”. They shall be cast into the wine-press of the wrath of God, where they shall be pressed down with wrath, as grapes are pressed in a wine-press, Rev. xiv. 19. “Cast into the great wine-press of the wrath of God.” God will then make appear in their misery how terrible his wrath is, that men and angels may know how much more dreadful the wrath of God is, than the wrath of kings, or any creatures. They shall know what God can do towards his enemies, and how fearful a thing it is to provoke him to anger. …
Despise Him not, lastly, for He is coming again in pomp and Glory. Speak not lightly of Him who is at the door. He is coming, perhaps, while I talk of these great matchless things. Soon may He come into our midst, but He will come with rainbow wreath and clouds of storm. He will come sitting on the Great White Throne and every eye shall see Him! And they, also, who pierced Him. Do not despise Him now, for you will not be able to despise Him then. Will you do now what you cannot do then? Oh, what a different story will some men tell when Christ comes! How those who called Him foul names will hide their fouler faces! Come up now, do not play the coward, come up now and spit in His face again, you villains, who once did it in His lifetime! Come now, and nail Him to the tree again! Judas, come and give Him a kiss, as once you did! Do you see them? Why, they flee! They hide their heads. They do not any longer despise and reject Him, but their cry is, "Rocks, fall on us and hide us!" "You mountains, open your bowels and give us a place of concealment." But it cannot be—the Lamb's eyes of love have become the Lion's eyes of fire! And He who was meek and gentle has now become fiery and terrible! The voice that once was sweet as music is now loud and terrible as the crash of thunder! And He that once dealt out mercy, now deals out bolts of vengeance! Oh, despise not Him who shall so soon come in His Glory! Bow, now, and "kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and you perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little." Ask, "Who is He"? And when you put the question, answer it yourself, "This is my Beloved, and this is my Friend, O daughters of Jerusalem." Trust Jesus Christ, Sinner, and you shall know who He is! And He, knowing who you are, will save you with a great salvation! Amen.
When you have thus thought of His Justice, His wisdom and His Grace, like a silver thread running through the whole, I want you once more to adore His Sovereignty. What Sovereignty is this, that angels who fell should have no Redeemer, but that man, insignificant man, being fallen, should find a Savior in Heaven's Only-Begotten! See this Sovereignty, too, that this precious blood should come to some of us and not to others! Millions in this world have never heard of it. Tens of thousands who have heard of it, have rejected it. Yes, and in this little section of the world's population encompassed now within these walls, how many there are who have had that precious blood preached in their hearing and presented to them with loving invitations, only to reject it and despise it? And if you and I have felt the power of it, and can see the blood cleansing us from sin, shall we not admire that discriminating, distinguishing Grace which has made us to differ? But the part of Sovereignty which astonishes me most is that God should have been pleased to make Him who knew no sin to be sin for us," that God should be pleased to ordain salvation by Christas our Substitute! A great many persons rail at this plan of salvation, but if God has determined it, you and I ought to accept it with delight. "Behold," says God, "I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, elect, precious." The Sovereignty of God has determined that no man can be saved except by the atoning Sacrifice of Christ. If any man would be clean, Jehovah declares that he must wash in the fountain which Jesus filled from His veins. If God should put away sin and accept the sinner, He declares that it should only be through that sinner putting his trust in the Sacrifice offered once and for all by the Lord Jesus Christ upon the Cross. Admire this Sovereignty and adore it by yielding to it! Cavil not at it. Down, rebellious will! Hush, you naughty reason that would ask, "Why?" and, "Why is there no other method?" Yield, my heart! "Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and you perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little." Oh, magnificent love! A way as splendid as the end! A plan as glorious as its design! The design to save is not more resplendent than the method by which men …
Ah, my Hearers, how humbling is this truth to our pride—that the curse of God is upon everyone who is of the seed of Adam, that every child born into this world is born under the curse since it is born under the Law! Then, in addition to the curse that rests upon us because we are children of Adam, there is the further curse that comes through our own transgression. The first moment that I sin, though I sin but once, I come beneath the curse quoted in the 10th verse of this Chapter, "Cursed is everyone that continues not in all things which are written in the Book of the Law to do them"— cursed without hope of mercy apart from that blessed Savior who "has redeemed us from the curse of the Law, being made a curse for us." It is a dreadful thought that the trail of the serpent is over the whole earth, that the poison of sin is in the fountain of every human heart, that the blood in all our veins is corrupt, that we are all condemned already, that each one of us, without a single exception, whether he is a philanthropist, senator, philosopher, Divine, prince, or monarch, is under the curse unless he has been redeemed from it by Christ! The curse, too, while it is universal, is also just. There are many persons who think that the curse of God upon those who are undeniably wicked is, of course, right, but that the curse of God upon those who, for the most part, appear to be excellent, and who may have sinned but once, is an act of injustice! But when God pronounces the curse, He does it justly. He is a God of Justice and just and right are all His ways. And mark you, Man, if you are condemned, it shall be by the strictest Justice. Even if you have sinned but once, the curse is a righteous one when it lights upon your head! Do you ask me how this is? I answer—You say that your sin is little. Then, if it is but little, how little trouble it might have taken you to have avoided it! If your transgression is but small, at how small an expense you might have refrained from it! Some have said, "Surely the sin of Adam was but a little one—he did but take an apple and eat it." Yes, but in its littleness was its greatness! If it was but a little thing to take the forbidden fruit, with how little trouble might the sin have been avoided! And because it was so small an act, there was couched within it the greater malignity of guilt. So, too, you may never have blasphemed your God, you may never have desecrated His Sabbath, yet insomuch as you have committed a little sin, you are justly condemned, for a little sin has in it the essence of all sin—and I know not but that what we call little sins may be greater in God's sight than those which the world universally condemns and against which the hiss of the curse of humanity continually rises! I say that God is just even though He should pronounce a curse upon all His creatures! So tremble, O Sinners, and "kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and you perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him." So the curse is universal and it is just. …
When He says, "I will do it," who shall stay His hand, or resist His will? God, the Everlasting Father, has staked His honor and His Glory upon the success of Christ! I make bold to say that if Christ wins not the world, and if He is not crowned King of kings and Lord of lords, it is not Jesus that is dishonored so much as the Great Father by whom He was ordained, sent and anointed! The stain would not only be upon the manhood but upon the Godhead, too, for God, Himself, appointed the Lord Jesus and said of Him, "This is My Beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." He must see the Messiah through with it! It is the pleasure of the Lord that is in His hand—and that pleasure must prosper there, or else God's name would be dishonored. I am sure that Jesus will win the victory! I am delighted to notice a change of expression in the next sentence. The Son of God Himself also puts His hand to the work of ultimate victory. Read the text again—"Therefore will I divide Him a portion," "and He shall divide." God gives Him the victory and He takes it Himself. The Father grants it and the Son grasps it by His own right hand. The glorious Jehovah cries, "He shall divide," and the ever-blessed Son of the Highest, as a conqueror, comes forth actually to divide the spoil. O my Brothers and Sisters, Jesus is as gentle as a lamb, but I might say of Him as they at the Red Sea said of Jehovah, "The Lord is a Man of War: the Lord is His name." The Lamb is the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and who shall stand before Him when He goes forth to war? Who shall rouse Him? They that came against Him to take Him in the days of His humiliation stumbled and fell when He uttered the words, "I AM." And if the full power of that, "I AM," had been let loose upon them, they had not merely staggered to their falling, but each man among them had stumbled into his grave! It is He that stilled the waves upon Gennesaret! It is He that ruled the powers of the deep and made the devils fly at His bidding! If He puts His hand to the battle, woe to those that strive against Him! The defeat of Christ? Laugh the idea to scorn! No, the thorn-crowned Prince is victorious! Well spoke the apostate Julian in his dying moments, "Nazarene, You have conquered."All His foes will have to admit it. In the Day of Judgment, trembling, and in the lowest pit of Hell, despairing, they shall acknowledge His supremacy! The despised and rejected of men, with a rod of iron shall break His enemies in pieces! Yes, He shall break them in pieces like potters' vessels. "Be wise now, therefore, O you kings: be instructed, you judges of the earth. Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and you perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him." …
I think I see the last great day. There is a greater forest than this; this is but one corner of it. I see that forest stretched over sea and land, over mountain and valley. It is a forest of men. There stand the Pharisees, the self-righteous, the tyrants, the autocrats of haughty mien, the men of profound intellect with lofty brows, the men that questioned God's government; the infidels who said "Atheos," and denied his being. I see the high trees, that towered to such an elevation, and attracted so much admiration; and there, too, are the low trees contented to he low, for Christ of Nazareth was lowly. He, whose disciples they are, came riding on an ass even in the day of his highest earthly triumph. And now I hear the trumpet ring exceeding loud and long. Through the glades of that vast human forest the sound comes ringing broad and clear, "Smite! smite! smite! and let all the high trees fall!" O God, what a crash! He smote great kings and slew famous kings; for his mercy endureth for ever. He smites. What! another crash? The orthodox who rested in their orthodoxy, and the self-righteous men and women fall there; yonder the philosophic atheist, and here the scoffing sceptic; there the haughty persecutor, and there, again, the pompous priest and pretentious ceremonialist. Gather them; in Tophet, ordained of old, pile them together, cedar upon oak, and elm upon fir, gather them together. pile them on, pile them up; let the breath of the Lord, like a stream of brimstone, come upon the mighty pile. It is the funeral pyre of the giants. There lies the dead body of sin, and here comes the living spouse of sin, to be immolated upon that same pile. Her name is Pride. She comes; they clasp. The great transgression and the evil imagination, together they lie down, and the flames arise. Now the cedars, full of resin, give forth their flame, the sparks go up to heaven, and the flames even unto the throne of God, whilst I hear the voices of multitudes singing, "Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! for thou hast judged the great temptress, even Pride, and thou hast given her up to be burned with fire!" But what of you, what of you, that will be faggots to that great burning? What of you, proud sons of men, that will be fuel to that flame? Turn ye, turn ye! Fly ye to Christ, and then you shall stand in the judgment, and join in the anthem, "Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!" "Be wise now therefore, O ye kings; be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him." Oh! that we all may be found among the humble—not the haughty—in our present life, and that we may be gathered among the blessed, not destroyed among those whom the Lord abhorreth, in our future destiny!
"Kiss the Son lest He be angry, and you perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him." Psalm 2:12. LET us have a little quiet talk tonight. I have known a simple, earnest conversation turn the whole current of a man's life. I recollect a good man, who lived at a certain market town in Suffolk. He was no preacher, as far as I know. He had never tried to preach, yet he was a mighty soul-winner. He had noticed how commonly it happened in that town, as in most of our smaller towns, that the lads, as they grew up, sought employment in London, or in some other large center of industry and, consequently, they left their home, their parents, guardians and the associations amidst which they had been trained, to enter a new sphere—where they would lack much of the oversight that had hitherto checked them when prone to wander. His watchful eyes and ever-listening ears having ascertained within a little when any young man was going, he sent a polite invitation to tea. And at that tea table the words he used to speak, the cautions he gave, and the necessity he urged of being decided for Christ before leaving, and especially the earnest prayer with which he concluded the evening—these things have been remembered by scores of young men, who, on removing to the larger towns, could never shake off the impression which his quiet, devout conversation had made! Some of them even traced their conversion to God, and their subsequent perseverance in the paths of righteousness, to the evening they had spent with that humble, but wise and earnest individual! I wonder whether any of us remember, in our young days, any such talk as that which exerted an influence upon us? I wonder more if, instead of trying to preach anything great tonight which is not much in my line, I try to talk very seriously and pointedly to all present who are unconverted, whether God will not bless it by His Holy Spirit and make it a turning point to decide the present course and eternal destiny of some of my hearers? …