But we do thank you for this time. We do thank you that in the middle of our busy weeks that we can come together, even if it's through this electronic means and recenter our souls, that we can get a true perspective on life as we encourage one another and help this to be edifying for each one of us, help us to see not heroes to worship, but men that did what you call them to do faithfully. We thank you that we can, that we have these records, that we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses and that we can be encouraged by them. Thank you. for all this, and we pray in Jesus' name, amen. Okay, we got a couple other people that joined. All right, tonight is gonna be a difficult discussion for me because it's about Jonathan Edwards. And while both Calvin and Bunyan are dear to me and there's much information about them. Jonathan Edwards is like one of my heroes to the max. He is, remember we talked about Calvin being brilliant. Well, here's another one. So we've gone from Brilliant, highly educated Calvin to a repairman. And now we're back to another brilliant, highly educated man. But because of the times that Jonathan Edwards lived in, they're closer to us, and we're more familiar with all that. There was just so much going on in his life. It's really hard to boil this down. So if it gets to be nine or 930 and I'm still talking, y'all are free to cut me off if you want to. But I promise I'll try to keep it in our time. So one thing to think about, you remember we talked about in the 1500s, in the 1600s, the sciences were kind of starting to explode, remember? Sam, calculus was invented in the 1600s. I mean, these were not backwards, ignorant people. Things were happening. And so really the scientific revolution started in the 16 and 1700s. And it was founded by men that were, if not Christian, they at least had a biblical worldview. Worldview is something we're going to talk about in a later message, but they believed that they could see the hand of God and the mind of God as they studied creation because they believed he was a God of order, not of chaos. So they had reason to invest their time in studying. It made sense to them. If all of creation was mere chance, why study it? It may be different tomorrow than it is today. But they, believing in God and his order, they said, OK, this is a valid field of study. So all that was going on at this time, too. But this is when the philosophers, after hearing the scientific revolution and all the things that were going on and being learned there, the philosophers started saying, hey, man is pretty darn smart. he can really reason things out. And so with all he's able to do, it looks like there's nothing he's not gonna be able to do. It appears to us that man's mind, his reason, his rationality can be the standard for everything. So this was strangely called the Age of Enlightenment instead of the Age of the Darkening. But that was the way the philosophers responded to the scientific strides. So, you know, I want to talk more at some point about that divergence of science from Christianity. But for right now, this is kind of the atmosphere that Jonathan Edwards was born into. He was born into a Well, first of all, he was on the other side of the Atlantic from where all that was going on, but the thoughts, the intellectual flow of ideas had migrated to the new world as well. So it was a very rationalistic culture. It was a very, and by culture, I mean the intellectual culture. The plain guy in Northern New England was really concerned that he have enough apples on his apple tree to store for the winter because it was gonna be a hard winter. He wasn't concerned with all of this, but the intellectual flow of ideas was very rationalistic. And just like Calvin participated in that, so did Jonathan Edwards. I'm gonna go through his life and I'm gonna give you the kind of the background of what was going on once again. But suffice it to say that the Enlightenment had kind of a dry and impotent theology, okay? That's what the theologians of the day were taking from the Enlightenment philosopher. And then the science was beginning to come up with kind of this bleak and hopeless creation that was undirected and unpurposeful. So into that, Jonathan Edwards was born, who, like Calvin, had interests not just in theology and philosophy, but in botany and astronomy and entomology and human physiology. All these things captured his mind. But the one thing that I want you to think about, and you'll see it as we go through, Once Calvin and Edwards both were gripped by God as his instrument for bringing the good news to their congregations, they were totally focused on that. They subordinated everything else about their intellect to following the charge that the Lord had given them to pastor the souls in their congregation. And they did whatever they had to do. They prioritized appropriately. They did, as my former pastor Steve Martin said, they realized that the main thing was to keep the main thing the main thing. How's that for profound? That was from my past. I know it's silly, but they really did do that. They realized what was important and they focused there. versus having an intellect that could comprehend all this, they didn't get distracted through all these different fields. I appreciate that about them. Because of that, we all benefit because they had the time or made the time to focus their energies so closely. All right. The references I'm going to use for this study are Jonathan Edwards, A New Biography by Ian Murray. This is my favorite biography ever. Not just of a Christian guy, not just of, you know, somebody in the world, but ever, this is my favorite biography. He writes so well and he brings such clarity to the theological issues that were faced back then by Jonathan Edwards and the human part of him that it's just great. He's also one of my favorite authors too, but this is the top of my list for biographies. Next to that is Jonathan Edwards, A Life by George Marsden. This is, it's a thicker book, as you can tell. I've read it and it is different than Ian Murray's book. It's not quite as theologically based, although he does, I think, do good justice to the issues. It's much more detailed about the surroundings and all that was going on in New England at the time. Also, There is a life of President Edwards, and you'll know why he's called that, well, by the time we're done, by his great grandson, Sereno E. Dwight, and it's contained in this thing, which is only volume one of the works of Jonathan Edwards. And I showed you before the small type and bunions, works, this is as small if not smaller. And it's 2,000 pages of his works. But he does similar to Bunyan, he gives us insight into his life and his thinking, even his conversion, and we'll get there. Okay, now we're gonna look at the context. In 1703, Jonathan Edwards was born. Now, that was, well, hold on. Looking, that was 318 years ago and about 200 years after Calvin. So again, I want to try to give you guys some spatial dimensions on this timeline. So he was born in 1703, the same year John Wesley was born. In 1706, Ben Franklin was born. In 1707, the Act of Union created Great Britain, uniting England and Scotland. In 1711, David Hume was born. He was a philosopher. 1712, Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born. He was a philosopher also. In 1724, Immanuel Kant was born. You got it. He was a philosopher as well. So I've got philosophers on this list, unlike previous lists where I had scientists because, like I was saying, they were affecting the world with their interpretation of the science of the day. In 1731, William Cooper was born, the hem writer. 1732, George Washington was born. 1735, John Adams. Beethoven was born in 1770. George Washington was elected the first president in 1789. So that's not all that was going on, obviously, but it kind of gives you a picture. Okay, Jonathan Edwards was older than George Washington. Never really thought about that, but he preceded him by a good bit. Now, we're going to look at a summary of his life, like we've done in the past on the others, and then we're going to look at a specific situation he faced and try to identify some desirable character traits. Okay. He was born, like I said, in 1703, and he was the only son out of 11 children. That means this man had 10 sisters. He grew up in a family with 10 sisters, and he was in the middle of them. So not only did he have 10 sisters, but each one of them, when fully grown, were six feet tall. I mean, it's strange but true. And his father's friends used to talk about, when his daughters were full grown, about his father having 60 feet of daughters. Because each one, each of the 10 was six feet tall. So this was his growing up surroundings. His father was the pastor of the Congregational Church where they lived in East Windsor, Connecticut. And his mother was the daughter of a pastor in a church about 35 miles away. His name was Solomon Stoddard. More about him later. He was taught by his dad, his mom, his sisters. I mean, if you can imagine that, He was surrounded by learning constantly. And he was expected to memorize Latin at age seven. And he did it well. He was also required to do all of his studies in pen with no erasers. And he did that well, too. He was a very accomplished young man who could do whatever they threw at him, basically. He was also very curious. He would go out into the fields after his lessons, lay on his back, looking at the clouds, observing nature. He was very precocious, as we would say now. He even wrote multiple, I mean, not just two or three, but like 10 or 15 treatises on different parts of nature, spiders, what he observed about spiders, what he observed about the vegetation in his area. With the thought, he even tells us that he was going to have this published in Europe. Now, wow, that's amazing. He was 11 years old. and he was already planning on publishing his things in Europe. Now, if that wasn't enough, he was able to enter college at 12 years old. Now remember, we thought John Calvin was amazing because he entered college at 14. Well, here's Edwards at 12, entering college. He entered what would ultimately become Yale University, which was new back then, because his father and others were concerned with the direction that Harvard was taking, becoming too secular, even way back then. So, though he was an obedient child and outwardly very compliant, he tells us in these giant books called his personal narrative, He said that the spiritual convictions and affections, which he had known during the revival some years before he went to college, had worn off. And with their absence, he left off secret prayer. He tells us that during his college days, quote, I was very uneasy, especially towards the latter part of my time at college, when it pleased God to seize me with pleurisy in which he brought me near to the grave and shook me over the pit of hell. And yet it was not long after my recovery before I fell again into my old ways of sin. But God would not suffer me to go on with any quietness. I had great and violent inward struggles." Sounds sort of like Bunyan. But unlike Bunyan, as you're going to see, Edwards conversion and his recording of it is very different. He indicated that his primary struggle at that time was, I would ask you to guess, but pride. I mean, you can kind of see that. He was proud of his accomplishments, of his intellect, of his abilities. And with that, he admits he had a sense of moral superiority. that caused him to look down on others around him. At his graduation from college, he was the highest ranking student in the school and gave the farewell address. And though he was only 17, he stayed on to obtain his master's degree. Now, as his awareness of his pride problem grew, he prayed, and we're not sure he was converted at this time yet, for gentleness and patience, and tried to deal with his problem by developing several personal resolutions to promote the appearance of modesty. He wasn't actually praying to be modest and humble. He wanted the appearance of modesty and humility, but he did pray for gentleness and patience. But all his efforts only kind of increased his internal turmoil. They were outward. In his personal narrative, he tells us about his conversion in a manner more like Bunyan than Calvin, who was real short, okay, I saw the light, boom, I changed and I went this way. But unlike Bunyan, Edward's conversion, he's more intent on telling us about what he discovered about the excellencies of God. So I'm gonna quote him here. Quote, from that time, I began to have a new kind of apprehension and ideas of Christ and the work of redemption and the glorious way of salvation by him. An inward sweet sense of things at times came into my heart and my soul was led away in pleasant views and contemplations on them. Not long after I first began to experience these things, I gave an account to my father. Recall, he was a pastor. I was very much affected by the discourse, and when it was ended, I walked abroad alone in a solitary place in my father's pasture for contemplation. And as I was walking there and looking up on the sky and clouds, there came into my mind so sweet a sense of the glorious majesty and grace of God that I do not know how to express it. I seemed to see them both in a sweet majesty and meekness joined together. It was a sweet and gentle and holy majesty and also a majestic meekness and awful sweetness and a high and great and holy gentleness. After this, my sense of divine things gradually increased and became more and more lively and had more and more of that inward sweetness. the appearance of everything was altered. There seemed to be, as it were, a calm, sweet cast or appearance of divine glory in almost everything. God's excellency, his wisdom, his purity and love seemed to appear in everything, in the sun, moon, and stars, in the clouds, and blue sky, in the grass, flowers, trees, in the water, and all nature, and scarce anything among all the works of nature was so sweet to me as thunder and lightning, though formerly nothing had been so terrible to me." Resonate with you, Pastor Jerry? It sounds like your dad talking, doesn't it? Before, I used to be uncommonly terrified with thunder and to be struck with terror when I saw a thunderstorm rising. But now, on the contrary, I rejoiced in it. I spent most of my time thinking on divine things year after year, often walking alone in the woods. The delights which I now felt in those things of religion were an exceeding different kind from those before mentioned. They were of a more inward, purer, soul-animating and refreshing nature. I often felt a mourning and lamenting in my heart that I had not turned to God sooner, that I might have more time to grow in grace." So this is right probably around his senior year, if not right after his graduation. However, in a few years, he would question his conversion because he had not experienced the prolonged conviction and dramatic conversion that was being taught in New England He thought, this is the way it's supposed to happen, but it didn't happen to me. But he was a good enough student of the Puritans to realize God doesn't work in everybody exactly the same. He's free and able to use his regenerating power however he wants to do it. So when his heart was changed, his priorities were changed. and he took steps to leave college without getting his master's so that he could begin preaching. And though he did preach some and was offered a ministry at several places, he eventually returned to Yale and did obtain his master's. He then became a tutor or a professor at Yale for three years, but they were trying times for him because he really wanted to be preaching. Ultimately, he was called to be an assistant to his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, at the church in Northampton in 1727. It was in that same year that he married Sarah Pierpont. His loving and capable wife and the two remained together for the rest of his life, themselves raising 11 children, three sons and eight daughters. Their family life was observed by many people, and their impressions have come down to us as a picture of a godly husband and wife raising 11 children on a farm on a meager pastor's salary, each discharging their separate responsibilities with joy. One observer said, quote, no person of discernment could be conversant in that family without observing and admiring the great harmony and mutual love and esteem that subsisted between them," end quote. This is in spite of the fact that Jonathan Edwards' daily routine was to spend 13 hours in his study and then visit with the family for one hour before bedtime. for prayers and devotions. Now that would seem that he's neglecting his family and neglecting his wife, and some have said that. But others have witnessed this and have said, quote, no one could suppose that Sarah's, his wife's, hearty share of labor in directing the home was due to any thoughtlessness on his part. Their respective work was happily agreed. End quote. Meaning they both knew what was required of them and supported each other as they attempted to glorify God in their different roles. Now, some have said that Edwards didn't really know his children, was too harsh and stern, and, you know, it would be difficult to grow up with a dad who was always in his study. Is that right, Sam? But I'm going to give you an example. It's a single example. I'm sure there's others, but this was the one that I was able to grab. It may shed light on his knowledge of his children and his kind of understanding of their personality and his humor a bit. So when a suitor asked for his oldest daughter's hand in marriage, Edwards quote, plainly disclosed to him the unpleasant temper of his daughter. The suitor then asked, but she has grace, I trust, to which Edwards replied with seriousness and humor, I hope she has, but grace can live where you cannot. So he was aware of their personalities, he was aware of their spiritual conditions, and he had a little bit of that humor that he could engage when he wanted to. Okay, so now let's go back to his work at Northampton. Two years after he started there, his grandfather died, which left him, Jonathan, as the full-time pastor. Now, it's difficult to summarize this period of his life, this is part of what I was saying, because there was so much going on, some of it instigated by the congregation, some by the world, some by the theologians of the day, some by Edwards himself, and to top it all off, The Holy Spirit descended on churches in Scotland, England, and New England, Northampton in particular, bringing a revival. All this in his time at that church was going on. Now, it's ironic that as churches began to depart from the supernatural spiritual reality that is presented in the Bible, the Lord said, okay, I'm gonna show you supernatural spiritual working. And as a result, Edwards was in the midst of controversies about this for years and years. He was at the center of it because it happened around his congregation and kind of radiated outward. So first he was attacked kind of by those that believed in the power of God to change hearts, but they were very, very unwilling to allow for the physical manifestations of the spirit descending in that way. So if you haven't read anything about it, those revival sermons, meetings where revival would take place, they were very physically affected by the Word of God. So there were those people that said, no, we don't hold to that. That was ministers. There were other ministers that said, you know, we don't really believe in this spiritual stuff at all. We think he's just working them up into psychological fanaticism. So there was multiple facets of the controversy that he was having to deal with. He addressed these concerns in his very first book. This is not an original copy, but it is a very, very, very old one. And I'm gonna show you the title page. Remember last week, Pastor Jerry read the title of the book that he was quoting from. This one is, A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton, in the surrounding towns and villages of New Hampshire in New England." So again, a large title for a little bitty book, but again, it's extraordinarily small type. So I love this because it reminds me, as you'll see later, of Edwards because he had extraordinarily small handwriting. And he did it on purpose, as you'll see, because of the scarcity of paper. Now, he did not, in this book, dismiss the physical manifestations. He didn't condone fanaticism, but he didn't dismiss these physical manifestations because, well, not only because, but in one situation for a season, his wife was very much affected. And she even says, and this is a quote of hers, she was so conscious, quote, of the joyful presence of the Holy Spirit that only with difficulty could she refrain from leaping with transports of joy. So There were people that were joyful, like she was. There were people that came under intense, intense conviction, some to the point of actually taking their own life. Now, that's again, part of why he was in the center of all of this, because some would criticize him for being too fanatical and preaching too hard. to the people and emotionally driving them to suicide. Others were saying, what? You're just letting these people go. They're wild, they're unruly. None of this makes sense. However, he regarded that situation with his wife, Sarah, as God filling her with joy and glory and saw it as that and the experience of others as evidence of New Testament Christianity. So he was walking a fine line there. There was certainly excesses, you know, the evil one is not gonna let something like this happen without throwing counterfeits in there. There's gonna be things that are happening that aren't of the Lord, but they look really close to it. So all that was happening, he was trying to decipher what was real, what was false. I mean, in anybody else, that would have been overpowering, but he was able to address it. Now, you may have heard and even seen caricatures of Edwards as a fire and brimstone preacher. You know, the titles of his sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Well, many in our time have criticized him for preaching sermons that relied on shouting and thundering from the pulpit. The truth is, according to multiple eyewitnesses, this isn't just one, I'm gonna quote one, quote, that his voice was low and calm. He aimed to avoid a sad tone and the very ridiculous whining tone which he had heard from some men. He made but little motion with his head or hands. I couldn't do that, you see me, I'm always using my hands. He made just a little motion with his head or hands. What was striking, this is still being quoted from the eyewitnesses, was the distinctness and clarity of his thought. he handled concepts as scrupulously and precisely as a banker handles currency. That together with a seriousness arising from a solemn consciousness of the presence of God was visible in his looks and general demeanor. He appeared with such gravity and solemnity, and his words were so full of ideas that few speakers have been able to command the attention of an audience as he did." So yeah, it's fun to make a caricature of this yelling, screaming, ranting person, but the truth is, kind of like Calvin, that Here was this man that had the ability to communicate profoundly deep things to his congregation, and he knew that if he added emotion and any sorts of affectation, they would miss the content and be moved by the oration. So he was very consciously, like Calvin, saying, this is what you need to understand. So again, we dispelled a myth about a past preacher that I think should be helpful for you going forward. But from the titles of his sermons, you can see he was very concerned. Here I am with my hands again. very concerned about the state of their souls and that they understood their relationship to God and His law. Here's some other titles. The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners. Very seeker-friendly, wouldn't you say? God glorified in the work of redemption by the greatness of man's dependence on Him and the whole of it. I mean, what he's doing is showing people that they have no hope in themselves. And he's pointing them to God, which is different from the Armenian preaching that had become popular around there. So here's the name of some of his other books and discourses. Man's Natural Blindness in Religion. Men naturally God's enemies. All these are just so blunt and in your face. A History of the Work of Redemption, I have an old copy of that too, which is very dear to me. It's basically a miniature systematic theology. The charity and its fruits which is exposition of 1 Corinthians 13, and then a treatise concerning religious affections. Now that one we'll come back to in a little bit because it was part of his understanding of what was happening during the revival and conversions where he became more convinced of the need for a pure church and not have it diluted by worldlings. I'm getting ahead of myself, though. As I mentioned earlier, he was always studying and learning. so he was not the type of pastor that interacted with his congregation a lot. He was what was called a scholar pastor, not a visiting pastor. And that possibly added to the strife that surrounded his theological convictions about communion, and church membership. So that's what I was getting ahead of myself with. His observation of conversions, his understanding of the work of the Spirit, made him become aware of something that was going on in his own church that he was not comfortable with. Now, that's actually what we're going to talk about at the end, the situation that he faces. But he ended up having to leave that church After leaving, after 27 years at that church, he was in high demand, even overseas. He was offered a pastorate in Scotland, because remember we're talking about the share of ideas back and forth between Europe and here. They were reading his works over there and were amazed at the depth and his ability to expound these things. So he was in demand in Europe. He also was offered a ministry in Virginia. However, he chose to become a missionary to the Mohawk and Housatonic Indians in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, at a great and he moved there in 1751, probably as a result of reading David Brainerd's diary, which he edited. Well, once he got there, he realized the situation with the management and funding of the mission was in horrible disarray, and it degenerated even further, causing his family to incur severe financial hardship to the point where his daughters had to make lace in order to sell. Recall John Bunyan, what he did when he was in financial hardships. Edwards, and this is the part I was gonna tell you about where his small handwriting came in. used every scrap of paper of any type, a piece of an envelope, a piece of a written bill of sale, anything to write his discourses, his learnings, and even his books were written on this. He stitched them together and would send them as is to the publishers with this little tiny handwriting so that he could fit it all resources he had. But in spite of the financial pressures and the mismanagement and strife between several members of the board, for the Mission Society and the commissioners for the Indian mission, he produced what many consider to be his most important works that address the theological and philosophical errors of the day, including an essay on original sin. And remember, this is the world where Men were becoming the measure of all things. Didn't need supernatural and spiritual. And he's blasting out into that saying, nope, there is a problem. And here it is. It's sin. Dissertation concerning the nature of true virtue. What was good? What was right? Was there right and wrong? A dissertation concerning the end for which God created the world. Is it an accident? Why are we here? All these things were what the Enlightenment was trying to take down from a spiritual point of view to a merely man-centered point of view. And then finally, an inquiry into the modern prevailing notions respecting that freedom of the will, which is supposed to be essential to moral agency. This is another attack on Arminianism and a justification of God's sovereignty. So while he was there at Stockbridge and he was writing this and he was dealing with all the financial hardships, his son-in-law was president of the newly created Princeton University. And in 1757, his son-in-law died leaving the college without a leader. Edwards was immediately voted to be the next president of Princeton, though he did not believe he had the stamina for the job. Reluctantly, though, he accepted and left his wife in Stockbridge until he got settled in New Jersey. He was a strong supporter of smallpox inoculations, and he was vaccinated a few weeks after he took over his duties in February. The vaccine took successfully, and it was thought that all danger was passed when pustules in his mouth and throat began to make it difficult for him to swallow. Unable to drink sufficiently, his condition quickly deteriorated, and within days he was near death. A little before his death, in speaking a message to his younger daughter, he said, quote, Dear Lucy, it seems to me to be the will of God that I should shortly leave you. Therefore, give my kindest love to my dear wife and tell her that the uncommon union, which is so long subsisted between us, has been of such a nature as I trust is spiritual and therefore will continue forever. And I hope she will be supported under so great a trial and submit cheerfully to the will of God. And as to my children, you are now like to be left fatherless, which I hope will be an inducement to you all to seek a father who will never fail you." As he finished with this and other messages, he looked around the room and said to those that were there, now, where is Jesus of Nazareth, my true and never failing friend? Then just before he died, as those around him were lamenting of what his loss would mean for the college and the church at large across the world, he uttered a final sentence, quote, trust in God and you need not fear, end quote. Then he died. When news reached his wife in Stockbridge that her beloved had suddenly died, she was suffering from rheumatism so badly she could hardly lift a pen, but was able to write briefly to her daughter, quote, what shall I say? A holy and good God has covered us with a dark cloud. Oh, that we may kiss the rod and lay our hands on our mouths. The Lord has done it. He has made me adore his goodness that we had him so long. But my God lives, and he has my heart. Oh, what a legacy my husband and your father has left us. We are all given to God, and there I am, and there I love to be." So, with two such godly parents, It is interesting to see how God blessed their faithfulness in following him. One researcher tracked down their descendants for 150 years after their deaths and found that they had produced one U.S. vice president, one dean of a law school, one dean of a medical school, three US senators, three governors, three mayors, 13 college presidents, 30 judges, 60 doctors, 65 college professors, 75 military officers, 80 public office holders, 100 lawyers, and 100 clergymen, all from that single union. God blesses his people when they follow him. So while this study isn't intended to be hero worship, like I said, it is important that we acknowledge the good gifts that the Lord gives to his church. And that's what the leaders at Princeton did when they erected the gravestone where Jonathan Edwards is put to rest. They and other theologians from all over Europe knew that Edwards had defended Orthodox Christianity in the face of the onslaught of Enlightenment philosophy in a way that no one else could have done, and he did it in the most humble circumstances you can imagine. Unlike the anonymity of John Calvin's grave, Edwards' gravestone is very large. They put it there, the trustees of the college did, and is in the classical tradition of extolling the virtues of the deceased and inviting the passerby to pause and mourn. And it's still there today. It's written in Latin, but this is what it says. And it's long. Sacred to the memory of the most venerable man, Jonathan Edwards, Master of Arts, President of the College of New Jersey, which is Princeton. He was born at Windsor in Connecticut on the 5th of October 1703, son of the Reverend Timothy Edwards, Educated at Yale College, he commenced his ministry at Northampton on the 15th of February, 1727. He was dismissed from that place on the 22nd of June, 1750, and took up the office of instructing the barbarians, the Indians. He was made president of Nassau Hall, Princeton, the 16th of February, 1758. died there the 22nd of March following, in the 55th year of his age, alas, too brief. Here lies his mortal part. What sort of person, you ask of a passerby? He was a man of tall but slender body, made thin with intense study, abstinence, and application. In the piercing subtlety of his genius, in the keen judgment and prudence, he was second to none of mortals. He was distinguished by skill in the liberal arts and sciences, the best of sacred critics, an eminent theologian with scarcely an equal, a candid disputant, a strong and invincible defender of the Christian faith, a preacher, impressive, serious, discriminating, and by the blessing of God, most happy in his success. Eminent for piety, severe in his morals, but just and kind towards others. He lived beloved and revered, but ah, he was to be mourned when dying. What lamentations he aroused when departing, alas for so much wisdom, alas for learning and religion. The college bewails his loss, the church bewails him, but upon his reception, heaven rejoices. Go, passerby, and follow his pious steps. That is an epitaph. Wouldn't you like to be remembered that way? I mean, maybe some of us will, I don't know, but it encourages me that the Lord gives people like that to the church. They don't all follow the world and say, hey, this is where I can get rich. Hey, this is where I'll get fame and love and adoration. He followed the Lord and gave everything he had for the church. Okay, I could multiply testimonials literally from all over the world about Jonathan Edwards, but I'm going to move now quickly to the situation that we want to look at, and I want you to think about his character traits in this. This is what caused him to be dismissed from Northampton Church, and as is so often the case, it involves families. Without providing their names, suffice it to say that when Edwards' grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, died, Edwards continued to enjoy a period of success due to the presence of his uncle, Colonel John Stoddard, who fully supported Jonathan Edwards. However, when Colonel Stoddard died, Edwards found that many in the town did not support him, or it only supported him because of his grandfather. And even though they were relatives of Edwards, they had thought that one of their clan should have been brought in as Stoddard's assistant. And they had been stirring up resentment behind the scenes for all these years. Now, without going into details, these same relatives were the ones that had messed up the mission at Stockbridge. All the funding and all the management, they are the ones who had caused that mix up. Now, Ian Murray says, quote, the troubles now developing at Northampton remind us that few controversies in the church have been exclusively concerned with theological issues. meaning people or sinners, they're gonna find their cause and whatever it takes, they're gonna push it, even if it's in the church, even if it does damage to the church. So with this family jealousy behind the scenes gossiping as the background, Edwards had begun to realize that a practice that his grandfather had approved of forever, basically, Edwards was becoming less comfortable with it, as I said, because of his time during the revival and his understanding of the nature of conversion. The practice was this, that his grandfather said, you may come into the church and be a communicant, whether you're a believer or not, because he, his grandfather, believed that the Lord's Supper was a converting ordinance, meaning that it would preach and convert. And so he, the grandfather, did not want to keep people away from possibly being converted. Now, Edwards rightly said, I'm gonna quote what he says, He says, a very great difficulty has arisen between my people relating to qualifications for communion at the Lord's table. My honored grandfather, Stoddard, strenuously maintained the Lord's Supper to be a converting ordinance and urged all to come who were not of a scandalous life, though they knew themselves to be unconverted. I formally conformed to this practice, but I've had difficulties with respect to it, which have been long increasing till I dared no longer to proceed in the former way, which has occasioned great uneasiness among my people and has filled all the country with noise." So, here he is, it's years after his grandfather has died, the colonel has died, all the gossiping behind him, all the resentment, And he starts realizing, this is not biblical, what I'm doing. And one of the daughters of one of the members came to apply for membership, and he began questioning her about her qualifications. And she was backing away, not understanding because in the past it had been, yeah, come on, you can be full communicate member because this is a converting ordinance. And he was beginning to restrict membership and participation at the communion table. Well, that obviously got out and the families did not like that, obviously, because it seemed like here all of a sudden the rules have changed, which he realized he, Jonathan Edwards, realized was true. He was coming to a different understanding and wanted to teach it to the congregation. So then the congregation wanted nothing of it. So he said, I feel it my duty to explain this to you, and I will put it all in a book and if you all will read it and you still disagree with me, I will resign." So he wrote a book, and this is the title, another long one, A Humble Inquiry into the Rules of the Word of God Concerning the Qualifications Requisite to a Complete Standing and Full Communion in the Visible Christian Church. a mouthful, but what he's saying is, here was biblical theology about church membership. Please read it. And he believed that once they read it, those who revered God's word would say, oh, absolutely, because we know how convincing he can be. He's just amazing the way he presents things. Well, the congregation did not read it. How did you guess? And there was no way for Edwards to force him to do it. He tried many times over the period of 12 months. And I can't convey the amount of tension that was between him and the families. Now, remember, this is a congregational church. So there is a church committee that stands behind the pastor that looks over his shoulder and says, you can do this, you can't do this. So he had that. Guess who was part of the church committee? This family. who kept on and kept on bad-mouthing him. So he asked then, can we have not a church committee, but would the church committee call a church council of other churches in the area to be a part of this discussion? So they hated that, but they did it, but they picked the churches. Here's the thing, most of the other churches in that area were doing the exact same thing that Solomon Stoddard had been doing. So Edwards had asked for the ability to call other pastors in, they denied this. He asked Let's see, I'll pass on that quote. He requested that the council advise the congregation to hear him and let him present this, and they denied that. After more and more attempts to convince the people of the biblical authority for his position over the next six months, the council of local ministers, influenced heavily by the family, finally decided to recommend to the congregation that they separate their relationship with Edwards. The congregation voted to approve the separation. One witness on the council says this of Edwards' reaction. Quote, that faithful witness received the shock unshaken. I never saw the least symptoms of displeasure in his countenance. the whole week, but he appeared like a man of God whose happiness was out of the reach of his enemies and whose treasure was not only a future but a present good, overbalancing all imaginable ills of life, even to the astonishment of many who could not be at rest without his dismissal." So he was severed from the congregation, cruelly treated, with tension that I can't describe for over a year and a half. Nine days after the decision, he preached his farewell sermon, Concern for the Eternal Good of the Congregation. I'm gonna quote from the final portion of that sermon. Quote, a contentious people will be a miserable people. The contentions which have been among you since I first became your pastor have been one of the greatest burdens I have labored under in the course of my ministry. Not only the contention you have had with me, but those which you have had with one another about your lands and your concerns, because I know that contention, heat of spirit, evil speaking, and things of like nature are directly contrary to the spirit of Christianity and did, in a peculiar manner, tend to drive away God's spirit from a people. Let the late contention about the terms of Christian communion, since it has been the greatest one, be the last. I would, now that I am preaching my farewell sermon, say to you, as the apostle said to the Corinthians, quote, finally, brethren, farewell, be perfect, be of one mind, live in peace in the God of love, and peace will be with you. May God bless you with a faithful pastor, one that is well acquainted with his mind and will, thoroughly warning sinners wisely and skillfully, searching professors and conducting you in the way to eternal blessedness. And let me be remembered in the prayers of all God's people that are of a calm spirit and are peaceable and faithful in Israel. of whatever opinion they may be with respect to the terms of church communion. And let us all remember and never forget our future solemn meeting on that great day of the Lord, the day of infallible decision and of the everlasting and unalterable sentence. Amen. Edward's prayer as a young man for gentleness and patience was surely answered. and displayed that day. As Ian Murray says, quote, no congregation was ever spoken to more tenderly than the people of Northampton on July 1st, 1750. Some at least, as they made their way home that summer's morning, would have thanked God for the grace they saw in their former pastor. So, I will ask you What character traits did you see in Jonathan Edwards as he was being cruelly treated and dismissed?