Jonathan Edwards: Preaching Grace and Awakening Revival

And Edwards preaches a sermon entitled, God Glorified in Man’s Dependence, and in that sermon Edwards stresses the doctrines of grace that had come to the Puritans through Calvin, through the reformers, that stressed that salvation is from start to finish a work of God, and that it has to be that way because salvation is to the glory of God. It’s not our work, it’s not for our glory; it’s God’s work for God’s glory: God glorified in man’s dependence. [00:01:21]

But as we come back to Edwards, week in, week out, Edwards preached. Now, Edwards was a meticulous sermon writer. Edwards would write out his sermons, and these early sermons, he would sometimes write them out three or four or five times. Now, he would hand write these sermons, this was a picture of about the actual size of one of Edwards’ sermon manuscripts. Edwards would take a large piece of paper, it was called folio paper; I can give you a sense, it was roughly this size paper – we’ll look at this one later, but that’s a folio piece of paper. [00:03:05]

Edwards would take it and make a series of folds until he got it down to about a four-inch square. And then he would cut the sides, and then he would take a needle, and he would poke a hole here, and he would poke a hole here, and he would get some thread, and he would tie some thread through there, and he made a little sermon booklet. These sermons, he could get about fifteen words across, and about 20 to 30 lines on a page, and a typical sermon booklet is anywhere between 40 to 60 pages. [00:03:38]

Now, his preaching style changed after 1741. After 1741 George Whitefield had come to town, had come to Northampton, had preached in Northampton’s church, even preached in Edwards’ house. This was very typical of Whitefield. Whitefield would preach a sermon, then he would go stay at an inn, or he would go stay in someone’s house, and the crowds would find out where he was, and they would literally stand outside and wait until he would come out and preach to them again. [00:05:23]

And from 1742 on Edwards stopped writing out his sermons. Instead, he would write out an outline, preach the sermon, and then on Monday, go into his study and write out the sermon he preached. So this is a remarkable mind. Don’t try this at home, to imitate this mind. This is a unique person we’re talking about. But Edwards wrote sermons. It’s estimated that Edwards’ sermon corpus is estimated at 1,200-1,400 hundred sermons. [00:06:50]

There was in 1734-35 a revival in the Connecticut River Valley largely due to Edwards’ preaching, both at Northampton and as he would go up and down the Connecticut River Valley and preach. And Edwards wrote up a story of the revival and sent it to the papers in Boston to be printed so that it would encourage religious revival there in Boston. And the editor in Boston sent the letter across the sea to his friend, a hymn writer in England; you might have sung one or two of his hymns, Isaac Watts. [00:08:16]

And that book was widely read, widely circulated, and many believe was the seed, one of the seeds that would very quickly emerge as the Great Awakening in 1740-1742. So, Edwards is preaching, he’s continuing to preach, and we come into these years of the Great Awakening – 1740-42. It is a transatlantic phenomenon; we have Edwards in New England and other ministers where there’s revival taking place, the Tenents in New Jersey, and of course we have the Brothers Wesley, and George Whitefield back in Old England. [00:11:08]

And both Wesley and Whitefield, I think Whitefield preached it first, but Wesley also preached a sermon by the same title, The Almost Christian. And the “almost Christian” is someone who thinks they’re a Christian because they were in the Church of England, but they were not a true Christian just by being in the Church of England – they were an “almost Christian.” Well, as you can imagine, very quickly both Wesley and Whitefield found themselves un-invited to preach in churches. No problem, they simply go outdoors. [00:12:07]

Whitefield gets invited to America, goes down in the Southern colonies, establishes an orphanage in Georgia, begins to make his way – actually he lands in Delaware his first time, realizes, “Well, this is a pretty small state, maybe I should look for another state,” no, I’m kidding. Travels up and down the colonies, and everywhere he goes, literally thousands come to hear him preach. Benjamin Franklin struck up a friendship with George Whitfield, published his sermons, loved to hear Whitefield preach, never believed in Whitefield’s God, never accepted Whitefield’s gospel, but he loved to hear Whitefield preach. [00:13:29]

And just as there were detractors, there were also fanatics, and one of these fanatics was Davenport. And Davenport got so excited about the dynamic ministry of the Holy Spirit that he began to say, “We don’t need any books, we don’t need any learning,” and he actually sponsored book burning in the streets. He was jailed on numerous occasions for public disturbance, and at least at the end of his life, he published a detraction apologizing for his actions, and also acknowledging how wrong he was. [00:16:36]

Edwards was right in the middle of the Great Awakening, and in fact he preached a sermon literally in the middle of it that is his most famous sermon – Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Now, people love – speaking of caricatures – they love to have caricatures of the Puritans. What is it H.L. Menken once said? “A Puritan is anyone who thinks that somewhere someone might just be having a good time.” [00:18:46]

There’s a wonderful image at the end where Edwards says, “Christ has flung the door of mercy wide open, and stands in the way crying unto poor sinners, ‘Come in, come home.’” So, yes, the sermon is about judgment; yes, the sermon is about God’s wrath; yes, the sermon is don’t assume, don’t presume; but there’s also plenty of gospel mercy invitation in that sermon as well. [00:21:04]