Jonathan Edwards: Faith, Resolutions, and Divine Purpose

So he writes out his 70 or so resolutions. What’s fascinating about these resolutions – and you know it seems like at the New Year’s time everybody wants to make resolutions, and write resolutions, then they only last for a couple weeks; what’s interesting about these resolutions is the preface, and the preface is the key to the whole thing. The preface is acknowledging his limitation, acknowledging his sinfulness, and asking that God in His grace enable him to do these. [00:03:59]

One of my favorite resolutions of his is that he says, “Resolved never to speak ill of anyone, except it be for a good cause.” I love that. If he had only stopped at the “never to speak ill,” then we’d say, “Ah, that guy, he’s always showing us up.” But when he goes on to say, “Except it be for a good cause,” we understand that yes, he is truly a human being, and we appreciate him. [00:04:47]

He says, “I frequently hear that persons, when they are of older age, will sometimes speak of how they wished there were more things they had done, and that if they were only young again they would live their life differently.” So he says, “Resolved to live my life exactly how, if I find myself on my death bed, I would have wanted my life to have been lived.” [00:05:22]

As I mentioned earlier, Edwards is the kind of guy who thinks in pen and ink. If he’s thinking it, he’s likely writing it, and so we’re going to see how writing becomes a constant companion in Edwards from the time of this New York pastorate. [00:06:34]

Well, another interesting insight we get into his life here is that after a few months of pastoring this church in New York City, he actually counsels them to reunite with the church they split off from. That’s remarkable for two reasons: one is it shows his ability to deal with people as a 19 year-old, the second thing is it shows a bit of his altruism, because when they rejoin back with the church, that means he’s out of a job, and so Edwards goes back home. [00:06:57]

What Edwards did was he got a shutter, dark shutter, and he went out and he positioned himself – he really liked nature – he’d see the insect dropping and he’d position the shutter behind the spider so he could see what was going on. See, this is just good old Newtonian observation, right? And what Edwards saw was that as the spider released itself on one web, it released another web that was sort of a liquid, and it would solidify and it would harden in the air, and would actually take on weight and moisture from the air. [00:08:43]

In the letter he says, “It’s a good thing that God made them this way, because up in New England as the winter winds come, they blow out to the sea, and all these poor spiders get blown out to the ocean,” but Edwards says, “Now wait, that’s a good thing, because otherwise we’d be overrun with spiders.” But he also says this: he’s speaking of the wisdom of God in providing this means to essentially exterminate all these spiders, but then he says in this we also see “the exuberant goodness of the Creator, who hath not only provided for all the necessities, but also for the pleasure and recreation of all sorts of creatures, even the insects.” [00:09:38]

This is a fascinating way to view the world. I just wish there were something contagious about Jonathan Edwards’ vision that we could capture this kind of a vision of seeing the world that we live in; that we’re always tracing back what we see back to how we understand God, and how God made us, and why God made us, and what God wants us to do on this earth. Edwards was so concerned about that theme that he even applied that to spiders. [00:10:50]

But what we also know is that Edwards on his deathbed, and we’ll revisit this at the end, writes of his “uncommon union” that he shares with Sarah. So this was a remarkable relationship, and again as we’ll see, not one that was just charmed, it too was touched by conflict, and we’ll see that. They had 11 children. The first four were girls, and everybody thought the same was going to happen to them that happened to Timothy, but lo and behold there were some boys. [00:19:46]

One of the best letters I think that we have that shows some insight into the family life is Sarah was in Boston visiting her uncle. This was an aunt and uncle that she had spent time with when she was young and was sent to Boston for some significant time and to finishing school in Boston herself, and she had spent time with them and grown close with them, and so as they were getting older she decided she would go and visit them in Boston, and as she was there her aunt took a turn, and was likely going to pass away any moment, and so Sarah decided to stay there and stay through. [00:21:39]

But of course she didn’t die for a while, and so Jonathan writes a letter to Sarah, and he says, “Lucy woke up and is sick with the headick” – the headick is what he said – and he starts naming all the ills, and then he says, “When are you coming home?” So you get the idea that Edwards really missed having Sarah, and that caring for this home of 11 children did in fact have its challenges from time to time. [00:22:26]

Well, in 1727 he marries Sarah, he’s pastor of Northampton, and remember the deal. About five or seven years away from the guy dying, you get an assistant. The assistant learns the pastoral ministry on the job in an apprenticeship, begins to assume some of the pastoral responsibilities, as the minister gets older he passes things off to the younger guy, and then eventually the younger guy takes over and the older pastor dies, and five to seven years into this the guy becomes pastor. [00:22:49]