The Consequences of Sin.
I. The wages of sin are paid with a fearful compound interest, and the real terror of evil is that it does not die with its immediate author. It lives with a strange, vicarious life, ramifying, developing, multiplying, hideously replenishing the earth, till the lust of one ancestor, and the intemperance of another, and the pride, and the jealousy, and the selfishness of others, have intertwined and interwoven and invested their posterity with a thousand incapacities, and hindrances, and weaknesses, and tendencies to evil; and the world has become one great discord of pain, and sorrow, and misunderstanding, and intellectual failure, and moral palsy, and spiritual death.
II. Throughout the ages man has been incessantly impelled to ask, What is there in moral evil more than meets the eye? What will sin turn out to be when we see it in the light of the real world? And if we confine ourselves to observation of history, quite apart from revelation, Shakespeare's words are literally true,
"The weariest and most loathèd worldly life
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature is a paradise
To what we fear of death."
III. The judgment of man upon himself has been that the consequences of sin cannot but last beyond the grave. If we will from time to time think upon these facts the fact of the present consequences of moral evil and the fact of the gloomy forebodings with which the sight of these consequences time out of mind has filled the heart of man we shall be in less danger of the popular modern fallacy which insults alike both the human dignity and the Divine by promising to sin apart from repentance an amiable obliteration, forgetting that hell, after all, may be the last prerogative of the human will.
J. R. Illingworth, Sermons,p. 48.
I. Consider the ideas presented to us and apprehended by faith when Jesus Christ is revealed under the name of the Lamb. (1) One of these, doubtless, is the idea of meekness. It was not as a stern and just Judge that He came to save the world, or as a Monarch in the pride of state, or a Conqueror flushed with victory. He was humble and gentle, of poor parents, and from a despised town, born in a stable and cradled in a manger. He sits on the throne of heaven and earth, but still it is the throne of the Lamb. (2) Another idea comprised in this appellation is that of perfect purity and innocence. Not only was every animal used in the typical services of the Temple to be free from imperfection, but Christ was expressly compared to a lamb without blemish and without spot, and most exactly was the type fulfilled. (3) The leading idea of the title "the Lamb" is the atonement Christ made for sin by the sacrifice of Himself upon the cross.
II. Consider the awful words of our text: "The wrath of the Lamb." The meek and holy Being, who is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world, has His wrath; and His wrath is the more terrible because He is meek and lowly and the propitiation for all sins. Mercy neglected is guilt incurred, and in proportion to the love displayed in man's salvation is the ingratitude of evil, and must be the condemnation of those who reject Him. (1) "Behold the Lamb of God." And who is He? He is a Man, but no mere man, for no man ever spake or lived as this Man. An angel? "He took not on Him the nature of angels." God was manifest in the flesh, and God and man, one Christ, bore our sins and atoned for them on the cross; and can we think that such love, beneath the conception of which the mind staggers, half incredulous of mercy so infinite can we ever think that it can be neglected without guilt, and may be for ever set at nought with impunity? (2) Again, consider the price paid for our redemption, the exceeding bitterness of the cup which He drained that our souls might be healed. Christ has no recompense except that you should believe and be saved, and in every repenting and returning sinner He sees of the travail of His soul, the reward of all His sufferings, and is satisfied. And if you will not, if all has been suffered for you in vain, surely your ingratitude, cold-heartedness, neglect, must add tenfold terror to the wrath of the Lamb. (3) Remember the plainness of the warnings that are used and the mercy of His invitations. Past mercy will enhance future judgment; the love of Christ will shine at the last day upon the open books; and in its bright beam will stand out, in dark, plain characters, the guilt, the folly, the ingratitude, of those for whom Christ died, and who would not live for Christ.
J. Jackson, Penny Pulpit,New Series, No. 780.
References: Revelation 6:17. Homilist,2nd series, vol. ii., p. 153.Revelation 7:1-3. Ibid.,3rd series, vol. iv., p. 134.