first and the word afterwards. Oftentimes kings, when subjects have rebelled against them, have crushed them first, and then reasoned with them afterwards; they have given no time of threatening, no period of repentance; they have allowed no time for returning to their allegiance; they have at once crushed them in their hot displeasure, making a full end of them. Not so God: he will not cut down the tree that does much cumber the ground, until he has dug about it, and fertilized it; he will not at once kill the man whose character is the most vile; until he has first hewn him by the prophets he will not hew him by judgments; he will warn the sinner before he condemns him; he will send his prophets, “rising up early and late,” giving him “line upon line, and precept upon precept, here a little and there a little.” He will not strike the city without warning; Sodom shall not perish, until Lot has been within her. The world shall not be drowned, until eight prophets have been preaching in it, and Noah, the eighth, comes to prophesy of the coming of the Lord. He will not strike Nineveh until he has sent a Jonah. He will not crush Babylon until his prophets have cried through its streets. He will not kill a man until he has given many warnings, by sicknesses, by the pulpit, by providence, and by consequences. He does not strikes with a heavy blow at once; he threatens first. He does not in grace, as in nature, send lightnings first and thunder afterwards, but he sends the thunder of his law first, and the lightning of execution follows it. The lictor of divine justice carries his axe, bound up in a bundle of rods, for he will not cut off men, until he has reproved them, that they may repent. He is “slow to anger.”
9. But again: God is also very slow to threaten. Although he will threaten before he condemns, yet he is slow even in his threatening. God’s lips move swiftly when he promises, but slowly when he threatens. Long rolls the pealing thunder, slowly roll the drums of heaven, when they sound the death march of sinners; sweetly flows the music of the rapid notes which proclaim free grace, and love, and mercy. God is slow to threaten. He will not send a Jonah to Nineveh, until Nineveh has become foul with sin; he will not even tell Sodom it shall be burned with fire, until Sodom has become a reeking dunghill, obnoxious to earth as well as heaven; he will not drown the world with a deluge, or even threaten to do it, until the sons of God themselves make unholy alliances and begin to depart from him. He does not even threaten the sinner by his conscience, until the sinner has often sinned. He will often tell the sinner about his sins, often urge him to repent; but he will not make hell stare him hard in the face, with all its dreadful terror, until much sin has stirred up the lion from his lair, and made God hot in wrath against the iniquities of man. He is slow even to threaten.
10. But, best of all, when God threatens, how slow he is to sentence the criminal! When he has told those who he will punish unless they repent, how long a time he gives them, in which to turn to himself! “He does not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men for nothing”; he restrains his hand; he will not be in hot haste, when he has threatened them, to execute the sentence upon them. Have you ever observed that scene in the garden of Eden at the time of the fall? God had threatened Adam, that if he sinned he would surely die. Adam sinned: did God make haste to sentence him? It is sweetly said, “The Lord God walked in the garden in the cool of the day.” Perhaps that fruit was plucked at early morn, maybe it was plucked at noontime; but God was in no haste to condemn; he waited until the sun was almost set, and he came in the cool of the day, and as an old expositor has put it very beautifully, when he did come he did not come on wings of wrath, but he “walked in the garden in the cool of the day.” He was in no haste to kill. I think I see him, as he was represented then to Adam, in those glorious days when God walked with man. I think I see the wonderful similitude in which the unseen veiled himself: I see he walking among the trees so slowly — indeed, if it were right to give such a picture — beating his breast, and shedding tears that he should have to condemn man. At last I hear his doleful voice: “Adam, where are you? Where have you cast yourself, poor Adam? You have cast yourself from my favour; you have cast yourself into nakedness and into fear; for you are hiding yourself. Adam, where are you? I pity you. You thought to be God. Before I condemn you I will give you one note of pity. Adam, where are you?” Yes, the Lord was slow to anger, slow to write the sentence, even though the command had been broken, and the threatening was therefore of necessity brought into force. It was so with the flood: he threatened the earth, but he would not fully seal the sentence, and stamp it with the seal of heaven, until he had given time for repentance. Noah must come, and through his hundred and twenty years must preach the word; he must come and testify to an unthinking and an ungodly generation; the ark must be built, to be a perpetual sermon; there it must be upon its mountain top, waiting for the floods to float it, that it might be an every day warning to the ungodly. Oh heavens, why did you not at once open your floods? You fountains of the great deep, why did you not burst up in a moment? God said, “I will sweep away the world with a flood”: why, why did you not rise? “Because,” I hear them saying with gurgling notes, “because, although God had threatened, he was slow to sentence, and he said to himself, ‘Perhaps, they may repent; perhaps they may turn from their sin’; and therefore he ordered us to rest and to be quiet, for he is slow to anger.”
11. And yet once more: even when the sentence against a sinner is signed and sealed by heaven’s broad seal of condemnation, even then God is slow to carry it out. The doom of Sodom is sealed; God has declared it shall be burned with fire. But God is tardy. He stops. He will himself go down to Sodom, that he may see its iniquity. And when he gets there guilt is rife in the streets. It is night, and the crew of the worse beasts besiege the door. Does he then lift his hands? Does he then say, “Rain hell out of heaven, oh skies?” No, he lets them pursue their riot all night, spares them to the last moment, and though when the sun was risen the burning hail began to fall, yet was the reprieve as long as possible. God was not in haste to condemn. God had threatened to root out the Canaanites; he declared that all the children of Ammon should be cut off; he had promised Abraham that he would give their land to his seed for ever, and they were to be utterly slain; but he made the children of Israel wait four hundred years in Egypt, and he let these Canaanites live all through the days of the patriarchs; and even then, when he led his avenging ones out of Egypt, he kept them forty years in the wilderness, because he was lothe to slay poor Canaan. “Yet,” he said, “I will give them time. Though I have stamped their condemnation, though their death warrant has come forth from the Court of King’s Bench, and must be executed, yet I will reprieve them as long as I can”: and he stops, until at last mercy had had enough, and Jericho’s melting ashes and the destruction of Ai signalled that the sword was out of its scabbard, and God had awakened like a mighty man, and like a strong man full of wrath. God is slow to execute the sentence, even when he has declared it.
12. And ah I my friends, there is a sorrowful thought that has just crossed my mind. There are some men yet alive who are sentenced now. I believe that Scripture bears me out in a dreadful thought which I just wish to hint at. There are some men that are condemned before they are finally damned; there are some men whose sins go before them to judgment, who are given over to a seared conscience, concerning whom it may be said that repentance and salvation are impossible. There are some few men in the world who are like John Bunyan’s man in the iron cage, who can never get out. They are like Esau — they find no place of repentance, though like him they do not seek it, for if they sought it they would find it. There are many who have sinned “the sin to death,” concerning whom we cannot pray; for we are told, “I do not say that you shall pray for it.” But why, why, why are they not already in the flame? If they are condemned, if mercy has shut its eye for ever upon them, if it never will stretch out its hand to give them pardon, why, why, why are they not cut down and swept away? Because God says, “I will not have mercy upon them, but I will let them live a little while longer, though I have condemned them I am lothe to carry the sentence out, and will spare them as long as it is right that man should live; I will let them have a long life here, for they will have a fearful eternity of wrath for ever.” Yes, let them have their little whirl of pleasure; their end shall be most fearful. Let them beware, for although God is slow to anger, he is sure to do it.
13. If God were not slow to anger, would he not have struck this huge city of ours, this behemoth city? — would he not have smashed it into a thousand pieces, and blotted
