In the sermon, Edwards speaks of an angry God. Yet in another of his writings, Edwards speaks of God as "majesty and meekness joined together." Where...

For ,
the concepts of a God that is angry and
one that is merciful need not be completely distinct.
Because God is
omnipotent, all powerful, every decision is in His hands. God can be angry at

humans because they are heedless sinners on the verge of sliding into temptation.
Whether or not
God is angry, he still holds humans in His hands. God, and
only God, has the power to pause that
slide or even, if He chooses to be
merciful, to stop it. Edwards lays out these ideas in the
first part, in
which he mention that mercy is arbitrary and operates in conjunction with
Gods
will.

[J]ustice calls aloud for an
infinite punishment of
their [humans] sins. Divine justice says of the tree
that brings forth such grapes of Sodom,
"Cut it down; why cumbreth it the
ground" (Luke 13:7). The sword of divine justice is
every moment brandished
over their heads, and 'tis nothing but the hand of arbitrary mercy, and
God's
mere will, that holds it back.

It is in the
second
part that Edwards offers a fuller explanation of the role of divine
mercy. Speaking in second
person directly to the congregants or sinners, he
tells them what is in store for them. Because
the people are in an
unregenerate state, Gods wrath will be fierce and pitiless: there shall
be no
moderation or mercy, nor will God then at all stay his rough wind; he will have no
regard
to your welfare€¦. Citing Ezekiel 8:18 on Gods unsparing fury and his
deafness to their cries,
Edwards tells that God is ready to pity them. That
pity is part of his mercy which will only be
dispensed occasionally;
otherwise, they can expect only misery.

[T]his is a day of mercy; you may cry now with some encouragement of obtaining
mercy:
but when once the day of mercy is past, your most lamentable and
dolorous cries and shrieks will
be in vain; you will be wholly lost and
thrown away of God as to any regard to your welfare; God
will have no other
use to put you to but only to suffer misery€¦.

No matter how miserable they may feel only earth, they should remember that
damnation
will mean that even worse suffering will come and that it will be
felt through all eternity. The
day of mercy can come, but only when the
sinners embrace Christ. Edwards paints this as their
opportunity to enter the
door that Christ opens and on the other side to find His
love.

Y]ou have an extraordinary opportunity, a day

wherein Christ has flung the door of mercy wide open, and stands in the door calling and
crying
with a loud voice to poor sinners; a day wherein many are flocking to
him, and pressing into the
kingdom of God€¦.

Edwards warns those who have not been
born again to this day that
they are in an extremely dangerous state because they have
hardened their
hearts against God. This danger is of being passed over and left, never to

receive the remarkable and wonderful dispensation of God's mercy€¦ He urges them to wake
up
and realize that Gods fierce wrath will be unbearable.

Thus, he offers hope
to those who embrace
Christ.