Our next remark is — unbelief has been severely punished. Turn to the Scriptures! I see a world all fair and beautiful; its mountains laughing in the sun, and the fields rejoicing in the golden light. I see maidens dancing, and young men singing. How fair the vision! But lo! a grave and reverend sire lifts up his hand, and cries, “A flood is coming to deluge the earth: the fountains of the great deep will be broken up, and all things will be covered. See yonder ark! One hundred and twenty years have I toiled with these my hands to build it; flee there, and you are safe.” “Aha! old man; away with your empty predictions! Aha! let us be happy while we may! when the flood comes, then we will build an ark but there is no flood coming; tell that to fools; we believe no such thing.” See the unbelievers pursue their merry dance. Listen unbeliever! Do you not hear that rumbling noise? Earth’s bowels have begun to move, her rocky ribs are strained by dire convulsions from within; lo! they break with the enormous strain, and out from between them torrents rush unknown since God concealed them in the bosom of our world. Heaven is split in sunder! It rains. Not drops, but clouds descend. A cataract, like that of old Niagara, rolls from heaven with mighty noise. Both firmaments, both deeps — the deep below and the deep above — clasp their hands. Now unbelievers, where are you now? There is your last remnant. A man — his wife clasping him around the waist — stands on the last summit that is above the water. See him there? The water is up to his loins even now. Hear his last shriek! He is floating — he is drowned. And as Noah looks from the ark he sees nothing. Nothing! It is a void profound. “Sea monsters whelp and stable in the palaces of kings.” All is overthrown, covered, drowned. What has done it? What brought the flood upon the earth? Unbelief. By faith Noah escaped from the flood. By unbelief the rest were drowned.
13. And, oh! do you not know that unbelief kept Moses and Aaron out of Canaan? They did not honour God; they struck the rock when they ought to have spoken to it. They disbelieved: and therefore the punishment came upon them, that they should not inherit that good land, for which they had toiled and laboured.
14. Let me take you where Moses and Aaron lived — to the vast and howling wilderness. We will walk about it for a time; sons of the weary foot, we will become like the wandering Bedouins, we will tread the desert for a while. There lies a carcass whitened in the sun; there another, and there another. What do these bleached bones mean? What are these bodies — there a man, and there a woman? What are all these? How did these corpses get here? Surely some grand encampment must have been cut off here in a single night by a blast, or by bloodshed. Ah! no, no. Those bones are the bones of Israel; those skeletons are the old tribes of Jacob. They could not enter because of unbelief. They did not trust in God. Spies said they could not conquer the land. Unbelief was the cause of their death. It was not the Anakims that destroyed Israel; it was not the howling wilderness which devoured them; it was not the Jordan which proved a barrier to Canaan; neither Hivite or Jebusite killed them; it was unbelief alone which kept them out of Canaan. What a doom to be pronounced on Israel, after forty years of journeying: they could not enter because of unbelief!
15. Not to multiply instances, remember Zechariah. He doubted, and the angel struck him dumb. His mouth was closed because of unbelief. But oh! if you would have the worst picture of the effects of unbelief — if you would see how God has punished it, I must take you to the siege of Jerusalem, the worst massacre that time has ever seen; when the Romans razed the walls to the ground, and put the whole of the inhabitants to the sword, or sold them as slaves in the marketplace. Have you never read of the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus? Did you never turn to the tragedy of Masada, when the Jews stabbed each other rather than fall into the hands of the Romans? Do you not know, that to this day the Jew walks through the earth as a wanderer, without a home and without a land? He is cut off, as a branch is cut from a vine; and why? Because of unbelief. Each time you see a Jew with a sad and sombre countenance — each time you see him like a denizen of another land, treading as an exile in our country — each time you see him, pause and say, “Ah! it was unbelief which caused you to murder Christ, and now it has driven you to be a wanderer; and faith alone — faith in the crucified Nazarene — can fetch you back to your country, and restore it to its ancient grandeur.” Unbelief, you see, has the mark of Cain upon its forehead. God hates it; God has dealt hard blows upon it: and God will ultimately crush it. Unbelief dishonours God. Every other crime touches God’s territory; but unbelief aims a blow at his divinity, impeaches his veracity, denies his goodness, blasphemes his attributes, maligns his character; therefore, God of all things, hates first and chiefly, unbelief, wherever it is.
16. 5. And now to close this point — for I have been already too long — let me remark that you will observe the heinous nature of unbelief in this — that it is the damning sin. There is one sin for which Christ never died; it is the sin against the Holy Spirit. There is one other sin for which Christ never made atonement. Mention every crime in the calendar of evil, and I will show you people who have found forgiveness for it. But ask me whether the man who died in unbelief can be saved, and I reply there is no atonement for that man. There is an atonement made for the unbelief of a Christian, because it is temporary, but the final unbelief — the unbelief with which men die — never was atoned for. You may turn over this whole Book, and you will find that there is no atonement for the man who died in unbelief; there is no mercy for him. Had he been guilty of every other sin, if he had but believed, he would have been pardoned; but this is the damning exception — he had no faith. Demons seize him! Oh fiends of the pit, drag him downward to his doom! He is faithless and unbelieving, and such are the tenants for whom hell was built. It is their portion, their prison, they are the chief prisoners, the fetters are marked with their names, and for ever shall they know that, “He that does not believe shall be damned.”
17. II. This brings us now to conclude with the PUNISHMENT. “You shall see it with your eyes, but shall not eat of it.” Listen unbelievers! you have heard this morning your sin, now listen to your doom: “You shall see it with your eyes, but shall not eat of it.” It is so often with God’s own saints. When they are unbelieving, they see the mercy with their eyes, but do not eat it. Now, there is grain in this land of Egypt; but there are some of God’s saints who come here on Sunday, and say, “I do not know whether the Lord will be with me or not.” Some of them say, “Well, the gospel is preached, but I do not know whether it will be successful.” They are always doubting and fearing. Listen to them when they get out of the chapel. “Well, did you get a good meal this morning?” “Nothing for me.” Of course not. You could see it with your eyes, but did not eat it, because you had no faith. If you had come up with faith, you would have had a morsel. I have found Christians, who have grown so very critical, that if the whole portion of the meat they are to have, in due season, is not cut up exactly into square pieces, and put upon some choice dish of porcelain, they cannot eat it. Then they ought to go without; and they will have to go without, until they are brought to their appetites. They will have some affliction, which will act like quinine upon them: they will be made to eat by means of bitters in their mouths; they will be put in prison for a day or two until their appetite returns, and then they will be glad to eat the most ordinary food, off the most common platter, or no platter at all. But the real reason why God’s people do not feed under a gospel ministry, is, because they have no faith. If you believed, if you only heard one promise, that would be enough; if you only heard one good thing from the pulpit, here would be food for your soul, for it is not the quantity we hear, but the quantity we believe, that does us good — it is that which we receive into our hearts with true and lively faith, that is for our profit.
18. But, let me apply this chiefly to the unconverted. They often see great works of God done with their eyes, but they do not eat of it. A crowd of people have come here this morning to see with their eyes, but I doubt whether all of them eat. Men cannot eat with their eyes, for if they could, most would be well fed. And, spiritually, people cannot feed simply with their ears, nor simply with looking at the preacher; and so we find the majority of our congregations come just to see; “Ah, let us hear what this babbler would say, this reed shaken in the wind.” But they have no faith; they come, and they see, and see, and see, and never eat. There is someone in the front there, who gets converted; and someone down below, who is called by sovereign grace; some poor sinner is weeping under a sense of his blood guiltiness; another is crying for mercy to God: and another is