more books to give away before we begin presentation number two. And I do want to ask, are there any here who are senior pastors or training for pastoral ministry? If that describes you, raise your hand. Got one. All right, number one. Then this book is yours. It's called The Salvation of Souls, Nine Previously Unpublished Sermons on the Call to Ministry and the Gospel by Jonathan Edwards. And it's got a foreword by a biographer, George Marsden, and it's edited by Richard Bailey and Greg Wills. Give that one to the brother back there. And then anyone who's a Baptist that wants to read this book by Dr. Tom Nettles, titled By His Grace and For His Glory, A Historical, Theological, and Practical Study of the Doctrines of Grace in Baptist Life. First hand, I see, gets it. Yes, Leslie. There you go. All right, I'll look forward to the second presentation on the doctrinal preaching of Jonathan Edwards. Please come. When Paul admonishes Timothy, as to some of the things that he needs to be careful of in his ministry, both from his personal life and from the function as a minister. I think that one of the most profound paragraphs, if you can talk about degrees of profundity in divine revelation, nevertheless, where a lot of the ideas just come together and coalesce is in 2 Timothy chapter 2, beginning with verse 8. He says, Remember Jesus Christ. risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel, for which I am suffering, bound with chains as a criminal. But the word of God is not bound. Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory." The saying is trustworthy. For if we have died with Him, we will live with Him. If we endure, we will also reign with Him. If we deny Him, He also will deny us. If we are faithless, He remains faithful for He cannot deny Himself. Particularly important is Edwards' concentration on preaching as the premier human activity. In preaching, Edwards proclaimed and applied the many doctrines which composed the revelation of scripture. He searched for appropriate words, analogies, and images and engaged in as much precision and elaboration as a particular text in light of the whole of revelation required. His aim was to strike home to the conscience the necessity of the soul's relish of the beauty of God. The introduction to a Jonathan Edwards reader describes Edwards' commitment to the task of preaching. The central vehicle for revivalism was pulpit oratory and for virtually his entire life Edwards was first and foremost a preacher. The efflorescence of scientific, philosophical, and later psychological rumination took place within a context of weekly preaching of the Word. These sermons undergirded almost all of his philosophical work and lent that work much of its urgency. Ultimately, Edward's ideas, visions, and insights were applied to the central task of converting hardened sinners in the pews from love of self-righteousness to disinterested love of God and divine righteousness. Now the word disinterested is a word that pops up in Edwardsian studies because Edwards talked about the necessity of disinterested benevolence. Now by that he did not mean that we have no interest in it, that we don't have any intellectual curiosity about it. Disinterested he means in a very finely defined way that a person does not, cannot, first of all, put self-interest at the center of things. That his benevolence must not be something that arises out of self-interest, but out of genuine love for the other. And that his belief of the gospel cannot be an an interested belief, but a disinterested belief. And you heard one of the phrases that he used as he was describing the reason for some of the falling away after the awakening was that people believe the gospel for personal interests, not because of a view of the glory of God and the rightness of being obedient to Him. So Edwards was trying to change people from a love of self-righteousness to disinterested love of God and divine righteousness. In all of this, Edwards reflects most worthily his Puritan heritage. Self-examination concerning an experience of saving grace, precise analysis of biblical components of the objective work of God outside of us, and a morphology of the work of the Spirit within us constituted the constant task of the Puritan minister. All of these were necessary if he were to be a curer of souls. Edwards was in dead earnest in this calling. that the ministry should experience these graces was axiomatic to Edwards. In a sermon on John 535, he was a burning and shining light. Edwards illustrates the necessity of both heat and light in a true gospel minister. His fervent zeal, which has its foundation in spring and that holy and powerful flame of love to God and man, that is in his heart appears in the fervency of his prayers to God, and in the earnestness and power with which he preaches the word of God, declares to sinners their misery, and warns them to fly from the wrath to come, and reproves and testifies against all ungodliness, and the unfamed earnestness and compassion with which he invites the weary and heavy laden to their Savior, and the fervent love with which he counsels and comforts the saints. and the holy zeal, courage, and steadfastness with which he maintains the exercise of discipline in the house of God, notwithstanding all the opposition he meets with in that difficult part of the ministerial work. Genuine and lasting heat, however, always is the product of light. Zeal, no matter how high it is pitched, abstracted from a spiritual understanding of the truth, will produce bluster, but not love or holiness. The doctrines of revealed religion are the foundation of all useful and excellent knowledge. The Word of God leads barbarous nations into the ways of using their understanding. It brings their minds into a way of reflection and abstracted reasoning. I was talking with one of the brethren about Edwards and his use of reason just earlier and this is one of the things that Edwards saw is that revelation has a way of cleaning up all of the inconsistencies and all of the lack of accuracy and the the kind of superstitions and irrationalities that come into the human being. But once you have these principles of divine revelation that are established, it frees the mind and it makes you more reasonable. You can't start with the idea that you can be reasonable. You have to start with revealed truth. And so that's what Edwards is He's saying it brings their minds into a way of reflection and abstracted reasoning and delivers from uncertainty in the first principles, such as the being of a God, the dependence of all things upon Him, being subject to His influence and providence and being ordered by His wisdom. Such principles as these are the basis of all true philosophy. and appear more and more as philosophy improves. Revelation delivers mankind from that distraction and confusion which discourages all attempts to improve in knowledge. Revelation actually gives men a most rational account of religion and morality. and the highest philosophy, and all the greatest things that belong to learning concerning God, the world, human nature, spirits, providence, and eternity. Revelation not only gives us the foundation and the first principles of all learning, but it gives us the end, the only end that would be sufficient to move a man to the pursuit. How Edwards preached doctrine. None would doubt that Edwards was full of doctrine and apt instruction, and that from a literary standpoint, his appeals to the conscience and heart were incomparably compelling. Some doubt exists, however, concerning how effective Edwards was in delivery. Much scholarly ink has been spilled in examining evidences in the sermon manuscripts for clues to the delivery style of this preacher. These observations about literary style serve only to underscore what Edwards himself argued about the manner of preaching. Edward's mythical mildness in detachment and delivery was entered as a polemical device in the early 19th century in an effort to shame the perpetrators of the wildness of the camp meeting revival on the frontier. In his complete history of Connecticut, civil and ecclesiastical, Benjamin Trumbull devotes well over 100 pages to the New England awakening of the 18th century. He reports that Edwards calmly read the sermon, that is, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, and responded to his listeners' spiritual distress with a request that they be silent so that he could be heard. Such an example should shock the shameless Methodists into greater order and decorum. Edwards' own testimony makes the construction of a different scenario possible. After delivering Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God in Enfield, Connecticut in July of 1741, Edwards heard of rising complaints about the supposed sensationalism of awakening preaching. Supposedly, preachers raised the affections of the congregation too high. It was probably not only in defense of his friends, Whitfield and Tennant and others, that Edwards argued for the necessity of lively preaching. An insipid, dry kind of delivery utterly betrays the magnitude of the issues at stake. To those who complained, Edwards asked if the affections were raised by the truth and if the height of raising was justified by the importance of the subject. If the subject by its own nature, thank you very much, how kind. Did you open it? I always do that for my wife. She can't turn that thing and get it to open, so I've learned the technique. Thank you. To those who complained, Edwards asked if the affections were raised by the truth and if the height of raising was justified by the importance of the subject. He says, if the subject by its own nature is worthy of very great affection, Edwards observes, then speaking of it with very great affection is most agreeable to the nature of the subject. or is the truest representation of it, and therefore has most of a tendency to beget true ideas of it in the mind of those to whom the representation is made. For his own part, Edwards expressed the desire to raise the affections of my hearers as high as possibly I can, provided they are affected with nothing but truth and with affections that are not disagreeable to the nature of the subject. To those under a sense of misery, Edwards would offer no false comfort. I am not afraid to tell sinners who are most sensible of their misery that their case is indeed as miserable as they think it to be, and a thousand times more so, for this is the truth. Too many in his day focused narrowly on extent of learning, strength of reason, and correctness of method and language. But for the most proportionate correctness of perception, the people needed something else. Men may abound in this sort of light and have no heat, Edwards judged. Our people do not so much need to have their heads stored as to have their hearts touched. He argued that scripture presents a different mode of preaching from that highly touted by the established clergy of his day. Cry aloud, lift up your voice like a trumpet, the Lord told Ezekiel. Smite with a hand, stomp with your foot were further instructions and with all the intent of forcing the infinite importance of the message. A large number of other scriptures command, exhort, and predict a crying out in gospel proclamation, giving the clear impression that a most affectionate and earnest manner of delivery, in many cases, becomes a preacher of God's Word. Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield, in his article, Edwards in the New England Theology, contends that the richest fruit of Edwards' studies came in his preaching. A single Edward sermon is a marvel of doctrinal instruction. Each is a study in incisive, elaborate, and detailed statements of doctrinal truth, replete with all the necessary distinctions and historical allusions. Though much of the precision and fullness of argument was fashioned and inserted for publication The manuscripts show that in his sermons he endeavored clearly and distinctly to explain the doctrines of religion and unravel the difficulties that attend them and to confirm them with strength of reason and argumentation and also to observe some easy and clear method for the help of the understanding and the memory. Doctrine, however, never stands abstracted from the claims of God and his truth on the human soul. Edwards was, in Warfield's words, as arresting and awakening as he was instructive. Edward's sermon instruction and doctrine always came with a view to grip the heart with conviction, confession, repentance, adoration, or other responses implicit within the doctrine. Because he was himself filled with the profoundest sense of the heinousness of sin, Edward set himself to arouse his hearers to some realization of the horror of their condition as objects of the divine displeasure. and of the incredible goodness of God in intervening for their salvation." Warfield says, "...side by side with the most moving portrayal of God's love in Christ and of the blessedness of communion with Him, He therefore set with the most startling effect equally vivid pictures of the dangers of unforgiven sin and the terrors of the lost estate." The effect of such preaching delivered with the force of the sincerest conviction was overwhelming. Well, illustrations of this methodology abound. The power of his approach can be seen by isolating the applicatory elements of human duty or affection to which his doctrine applies. For example, one of these, in theology proper, Edwards unfolds the divine attributes with a view to convince the hearers of the perfection of joy found in knowing and contemplating this ineffably perfect being for himself. Conversely, he demonstrates the infinite criminality of giving anything less than perfect worship. This is in a sermon called The Danger of Graceless Knowledge of God's Attributes. In a message entitled, The Christian Pilgrim, Edwards describes heaven as a place where our highest end and highest good is to be obtained. Since we are made for God, we attain to our highest end only when we are brought to heaven. Here we have a very imperfect knowledge of Him and a very imperfect conformity to God mingled with abundance of estrangement. We can serve Him but in a very imperfect manner and always mingled with sin. But in heaven we shall be brought to a perfect union with God and have more clear views of Him. There will be no remaining sin to hinder a perfect service to God. seeing him as he is, will so alter our affection, so purify our heart in a flame of divine love, that we will glorify him to the utmost of the powers and the capacities of our nature. Since God is the highest good of the reasonable creature, and enjoyment of him is the only happiness with which our soul can be satisfied. The full enjoyment of God in heaven is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. All human loves and comforts are but shadows, but the enjoyment of God is the substance Earthly goods are but scattered beams, but God is the sun. They are but small streams, but God is the fountain. They are drops, but God is the ocean. He says, therefore it becomes us to spend this life only as a journey toward heaven. It becomes us to make the seeking of our highest end and proper good the whole work of our lives, to which we should subordinate all other concerns of life. Why should we labor for or set our hearts on anything else but that which is our proper end and true happiness? Conversely, the failure to appreciate the beauty and loveliness of the divine nature is the essence of sin. Edwards reasons particularly strongly on this in a sermon entitled, True Grace Distinguished from the Experience of Devils. In this sermon, Edwards highlights the full spectrum of systematic and experimental theology in order to isolate the one thing by which true grace may be identified. His assumption or doctrine is built on James 2.19. He says, Nothing in the mind of man that is of the same nature with what the devils experience or are the subjects of is any sure sign of saving grace. This one thing Edwards pinpoints as an apprehension or sense of the supreme holy beauty and comeliness of divine things as they are in themselves or in their own nature. That's what the devils do not have. Though they had it once, while they stood in their integrity, they now and forever will be eternally destitute of this. Nothing else belongs to the knowledge of God can be devised of which he is destitute. It has been observed that there is no one attribute of the divine nature but what he knows, Satan knows, with a strong and very affecting conviction. The supreme beauty of the divine nature only engenders hate in Satan. His understanding of the attributes of God gives him an idea and a strong sense of his awful majesty, but no idea of his beauty and comeliness. The application of all of his powers through thousands of years to understand God's ways and purposes, his taking things in all possible views in every order and arrangement, brings him no closer to seeing as beautiful that wherein the beauty of the divine nature does most essentially consist, that is, his holiness or his moral excellence. Instead, the devil and his demons hate such a holy being the worse, for his being infinitely wise and infinitely powerful, more than they would do if they saw him with less power and less wisdom. That unregenerate men share the same view of God as the devils is the theme of the sermon, men naturally are God's enemies. Men are enemies in the natural relish of their souls. When they learn that God is an infinitely holy, pure, and righteous being, their distaste for Him increases for that very reason. His omnipotence, omniscience, immutability, and even mercy are all hated because these attributes are holy and He will never be otherwise than He is an infinitely holy God. The second theme that I want to deal with briefly here is Christology. Edwards' applicatory scheme in Christology, both the incarnation and the atonement, was to convince his hearers of the wisdom and the inviolability of the character of God while demonstrating the infinite approvedness, suitability, beauty, and perfection of Christ. As in theology proper, these discussions of Christology have a frightful reality of human depravity as their foil. In Unbelievers Condemn the Glory and Excellence of Christ, Christ's attributes emerge in a brilliance that makes human depravity despicable and repulsive. Sinners neither love nor have honor for the glory and excellence of Christ. They have no desires to enjoy or to be conformed to the glorious beauty of Christ. Not only do they have no value for His glory, but they are enemies to Him on that very account. His glorious perfections are the ground of their enemy and opposition, which inflames their hearts against Him. Edward says, "...by being such a holy and excellent Savior, He is contrary to your lusts and corruptions. If there were a Savior offered to you that was agreeable to your corrupt nature, such a Savior you would accept. But Christ, being a Savior of such purity, holiness, and divine perfection, this is the cause why you have no inclination to Him, but are offended in Him." Christ's incarnation shows the superiority of divine wisdom to created wisdom. A consistent theme of Edwards, this idea, carries the day in a sermon entitled, The Wisdom of God Displayed in the Way of Salvation. If indeed the Son of God be substituted in the sinner's stead, then he becomes obligated to suffer the punishment deserved by the sinner. But how could one who is essentially, unchangeably, and infinitely happy, suffer pain and torment? And how could the object of God's infinitely dear love suffer His wrath? Created wisdom would never have superseded these difficulties. But divine wisdom has found out a way by the incarnation of the Son of God. Though a great mystery, yea, impossible to us, it was no mystery to divine wisdom. Christ is a glorious person, perfectly fit as Savior. He has sufficient power, wisdom, merit, and love to satisfy justice and fulfill the law for us. The wisdom of God through the Incarnation procures perfect and everlasting happiness. In Christ's work we may see God face to face, converse and dwell with God in His own glorious habitation. The most abundant riches, the most substantial satisfying pleasures, all needed earthly good things while here and glory for both body and soul hereafter forever are purchased by Christ. In spite of such rich provision, sinners remain in the same miserable state and condition, in a famishing, perishing state. You remain dead in trespasses and sins, Edwards warned, under the dominion of Satan, in a condemned state, bearing the wrath of God abiding on you and being daily exposed to the dreadful effects of it in hell. In light of such extreme pleasure on the one hand and danger on the other, Edwards pled with his hearers to turn to God through Jesus Christ, be numbered among the disciples and faithful followers, and so be entitled to their privileges. The reader of Edwards' sermons quickly learns that the doctrinal nexus that he conceives hardly allows one doctrine to be considered without feeling the immediate implications it has for others. A major component of his analysis of the whole system of divine truth is the connection of each part, as we have seen, to human depravity and spiritual affections. As heir to the Puritans and particularly influenced by his grandfather, Edwards devoted massive energy and time to the exploration of these issues. His purpose in this spiritual surgery was to strip his hearers of all false ideas of faith. Solomon Stoddard wrote an evangelism manual for ministers. In his preface to The Guide to Christ, or The Way of Directing Souls Under the Work of Conversion, compiled for the help of young ministers, the famous grandfather of Jonathan Edwards said, multitudes of souls perish through the ignorance of those that should guide them in the way to heaven. men are nourished up with vain hopes of being in a state of salvation before they've gotten halfway to Christ. Edwards followed in this train, fearing that many allowed common operations of the Spirit or even extraordinary human gifts to serve as sufficient evidence of God's saving favor. By this means, he warned, it is to be feared that very many have been deceived and established in a false hope. Ministers must not allow sinners to rest in their self-centered subterfuges to which they flee to avoid repentance toward God and faith in Christ, which operates out of that new sense of things. Multitudes have been deluded by a false view of faith and conversion. Conversion comes only where a glimpse of the moral and spiritual glory of God along with the supreme amiableness of Jesus Christ and salvation by Him shining in the heart. This view overcomes all opposition and, as it were, by an omnipotent power, inclines the soul to Christ. He says, therefore it is manifest from my text and doctrine that no degree of speculative knowledge of religion is any certain true sign of piety. Whatever clear notions a man may have of the attributes of God, the doctrine of the Trinity, the nature of the two covenants, the economy of the persons of the Trinity, the part which each person has in the affair of man's redemption, if he can discourse never so excellency on the offices of Christ and the way of salvation by Him and the admirable methods of divine wisdom and the harmony of the various attributes of God in that way, If he can talk never so clearly and exactly of the method of the justification of a sinner, of the nature of conversion, of the aspirations of the Spirit of God in applying the redemption of Christ, giving good distinctions, happily solving difficulties and answering objections in a manner tending greatly to enlighten the ignorant, to the edification of the Church of God, and the conviction of gainsayers, and the great increase of light in the world, if he has more knowledge of this sort than hundreds of true saints, of an ordinary education, and most divines, yet all is no certain evidence of any degree of saving grace in the heart." That's kind of a scary thing. But it's true. No speculative knowledge, no speculative assent, no sense of distress and terrors about sin and evil or the future. No work of the law in men's hearts is a sure sign of conversion. In fact, so bound are sinners to themselves and their own self-interest that only an act of sovereign grace can bestow the gift. It is most clearly at the point of depravity that Edwards demonstrates the coherence of his Calvinism with all the doctrines of salvation. This sense of the sublimity of God's holiness is what flesh and blood cannot impart. Only God can bestow it, and it is the special benefit which Christ died to procure for His elect, the most excellent token of His everlasting love, the chief fruit of His great labors, and the most precious purchase of His blood. Edward showed an ability to maintain a principle relentlessly, and no matter how many details and specific points were included in that general truth, they all must apply in accordance with the principle. He did not want to allow sinners rest in anything short of the distinguishing principle of saving grace. Though this grace was applied in a sovereign manner, in accordance with an eternal decree, though only the elect finally would be its recipients, all must put themselves in the way of faith and pursue it with great pains, though in the end they die at mercy's door." So this is the fourth point. It's the obligation of all persons to pursue this, even though they never attain it. Their obligation is to use their lives to pursue it. He regularly exhorted all to seek those distinguishing qualifications and affections of soul which are distinctive of salvation. He looked at salvation as a great undertaking to be firmly, universally, and perseveringly pursued. Though none can merit it, and it is sovereignly bestowed by free and sovereign grace, yet men have no reason to expect to be saved in idleness or to go to heaven in a way of doing nothing. The manner of seeking salvation is a sermon in which he emphasizes this quite profoundly. Sinners should seek to do all the duties that God requires of them, to do them devotedly and do them constantly. Salvation is a great work which requires all energy and a daily taking up of the cross. Men must be diligent in the use of the means of grace and be anxiously engaged to escape eternal ruin and afterwards to persevere in the duties of religion till the flood of death come. The blessing is of such value that no price is too great to be paid for it. God will give heaven to those that value its blessings appropriately, to those who are sensible of the worth and value of it and have thus set their hearts upon it. The choice is, in that sense, is theirs. To those who do not set their hearts on it and do not value it, He will not give it. They do not account the happiness of it worth much seeking, and therefore treat it with neglect. The danger of not seeking, Edwards points to with oppressive reasoning. You have refused to take care of your salvation as God has counseled and commanded you from time to time. And why may not God neglect it now that you seek it of Him? Is God obliged to take care for you out of love to you that you will not take for yourself either from love to yourself or regard to His authority? That's from the spiritual blessings of the gospel represented by a feast. Clearly, this cannot be done to merit salvation, but such labor is necessary in order to their being prepared for it. This is again, his reaching into this New England doctrine of preparationism. in order they're being prepared for it. No one can be prepared for salvation without seeking it in such a way as hath been described. Such seeking gives a proper sense of their own necessities and unworthiness. It predisposes them to prize salvation when bestowed, and it makes the seeker properly thankful to God for it. Men should be willing to engage in this business no matter how great and difficult it is, seeing that their own salvation is at stake. True seeking, however obligatory on the moral agent, was an utter impossibility for a man to give in his moral condition. In pressing into the kingdom, Edwards points out the reality that the strength of resolution depends on the sense which God gives to the heart of these things. Persons without that sense may seem to themselves to take up resolutions, but it is the resolution of the mouth more than of the heart. but to the one that continues seeking in spite of all obstacles and objections God has given and maintains such an earnest spirit for heaven that the devil cannot stop him in his course. Edwards preached so as to demonstrate without equivocation that depravity involved humanity in infinite demerit and thus dependent on omnipotent intervention. Each moral agent descended from Adam by ordinary generation will not turn from his sin left to himself, but will trample all the glory of the triune God in the mire and bedaub it with the filth and refuse of all the perverse dripping of humanity's hateful posture toward holiness. In describing every man, Edwards contended, there is all manner of wickedness. There are the seeds of the greatest and blackest crimes. There are principles of all sorts of wickedness against men, and there is wickedness against God. There is pride. There is enmity. There is contempt. There is quarreling. There is atheism. There is blasphemy. There are these things in exceeding strength. The heart is under the power of them, is sold under sin, and is a perfect slave to it. There is hard-heartedness, hardness greater than that of a rock or an adamant stone. There is obstinacy and perverseness, incorrigibleness and inflexibleness in sin. There will that will not be overcome by threatenings or promises, by awakenings or encouragements, by judgments or mercies, neither by that which is terrifying nor that which is warning. The very blood of God our Savior will not win the heart of a wicked man. In addition, this depravity is of such a criminal nature that God is under no obligation to intervene but may well do as He sees fit. God, Edward's teaching, is looking upon man in his fallen state, has a right to determine about their redemption as he pleases. He has a right to determine whether he will redeem any or not. He might, if he had pleased, left all to perish, or might have redeemed all. or he may redeem some and leave others and if he doth so he may take whom he pleases and leave whom he pleases to suppose that all have forfeited his favor and deserve to perish and to suppose that he may not leave any one individual of them to perish implies a contradiction because it supposes that such a one has a claim to God's favor and is not justly liable to perish which is contrary to the supposition The preacher, nevertheless, must use ordained means to serve as a goad to prompt seeking. This is the fifth point that I want to make. We've talked about the obligation of the sinner to seek, though he is so sinful that all of his seeking is vain unless God have mercy by sovereign grace. But now we also see that the minister cannot simply assume that sovereign grace does it all, so we must do nothing. The minister also must use all the means that God has given. as a prompt to seeking. Edwards therefore preached so as to convince his hearers of the reality of hell that they might contemplate all of its revealed characteristics with a view to avoid going there. Edwards invoked all of his literary, philosophic, and exegetical powers to convince them of the rationality, the justness, and therefore the certainty of eternal punishment. They should feel the emptiness of any hope that hell either has no existence or only temporal existence. They should not consider for a moment that hell is reserved for only the most heinous criminals or is tempered with mercy. He was relentless in the development of images to dissuade them of any hope that the experience of hell might be punctuated with reprieve." Edwards preached many sermons on this subject. not because he harbored a masochistic delight in the subject of hell, but for four, perhaps more, reasons. One, the subject demonstrated the power of worldly affections over the reasoning capacity. In a sermon entitled The Unreasonableness of Indetermination in Religion, Edwards enforces the unreasonableness of delay because of the infinite importance of the issue of eternal life. Also, we are reasonable creatures and invested with all the capacities to weigh the evidence, determine the truthfulness of Christian doctrine, and to make a wise choice for ourselves. Edwards says, he hath given man so much understanding as to make him capable of determining which is best, to lead a life of self-denial and enjoy eternal happiness, or to take our swing in sinful enjoyments and burn in hell forever. The question is of no difficult determination. It's just perfectly reasonable, it's which you should choose. The complicating factor, however, involves fallen affections. God offers heaven with self-denial and difficulty as the way to it. And sinners are not willing to have it on these conditions. On the other hand, God offers the world and the pleasures of sin to men, but not alone. Connected with it is eternal misery. Those halting between two opinions would divide heaven from the holiness and self-denial, which are the way to it, and from the holiness which reigns in it." On those terms, they would be glad to have heaven. By the same token, if they could divide sin from hell, then they would fully determine forever to cleave to sin. As Edwards enforces the urgency of immediate determination in this matter, he reasserts, consider those things which have been said, showing the unreasonableness of continuing in such irresolution about an affair of infinite importance to you. Though warned often by the boundless fury of the wrath of God, like the shoreless ocean of Noah's flood, the unregenerate act more brutish than animals in thrusting themselves on the sword of God's wrath. They act like the mad prophet Balaam who insisted on going forward though an angel with a sword drawn stood in the way. The second reason that he preached the doctrine of hell is that none should doubt the infinite criminality of refusal to love an infinitely lovely being. In Unbelievers Condemn the Glory of Christ, the infinite excellences of the Redeemer, both in His person and His work, are set forth by compelling images, analogies, and theological arguments. Edwards shows that God the Father has infinitely high affections for Christ and His work. And is He thus worthy of the infinite esteem and love of God Himself, he asks, and is He worthy of no esteem from you? If not, then you must be aware of your danger, for such guilt will bring great wrath. If a Savior would be offered who did not have such glorious perfections and excellences, and was not so opposite to your lusts and corruptions, you would accept Him well enough. But Christ's divine perfections offend you. Consider how provoking your unbelief is to God the Father, and what wrath it merits from the Son whom you treat thus." The third reason that he preaches so strongly on hell The preaching of hell highlights the power and gratuity which actuates saving grace, the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy. Edwards loved to exalt the wisdom and grace of God and the glory of Christ in redeeming the elect from punishment. In themselves the elect are miserable captives of sin and Satan, under obligations to suffer eternal burnings. But Christ is above all evil in what he did to proclaim redemption for us. And when the devils and all their instruments are cast into the lake of fire to their consummate and everlasting misery, the saints shall be delivered everlastingly from it. The work of redemption, Edwards says, is the most glorious of all of God's works that are made known to us. And this is one thing wherein its glory eminently appears, he says, that therein Christ appears so gloriously above Satan and all of his instruments, above all guilt, all corruption, all affliction, above death, and above all evil. The fourth reason. The preaching of hell, Edwards preached this doctrine to show that the damnation of ungodly men is appointed for that very end to show the greatness of God's power and jealousy. In the experience of wrath and jealousy flowing from the ineffable power of God demonstrated in the eternal suffering of the ungodly, the godly may thereby become the happier by knowing better the riches of his glory. But when they see how dreadful God's anger is, that will make them sensible of the worth of his favor and will make them prize it exceedingly. John Gerstner has said, Edward spent every waking moment trying to keep people out of hell. Titles of sermons preached on this subject are, Wrath Upon the Wicked to the Uttermost, The Wicked Useful in Their Destruction Only, Men Naturally God's Enemies, a whole series of sermons on the future punishment of the wicked, and Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, The Torments of Hell are Exceeding Great. In the Day of Wrath, the damned themselves will have a clear conviction, not only of the power of this wrath, but of its justice. Edwards represented this way. We have this expression often annexed to God's threatenings of wrath to his enemies. And they shall know that I am the Lord. They shall be accomplished by their woeful experience in clear light in their consciences, whereby they shall be made to know whether they will or not how great and terrible, holy and righteous a God Jehovah is, whose authority they have despised. They shall know that he is righteous and holy in their destruction. This all the ungodly will be convinced of at the day of judgment by the bringing to light of all their wickedness of heart and practice, and setting all their sins with all of their aggravations in order, not only in the view of others, even of the whole world, but in view of their own consciences. When the King of heaven and earth comes to judgment, their consciences will be so perfectly enlightened and convinced by the all-searching light that they shall then stand in, that their mouths will be effectually stopped as to all excuses for themselves, all pleading of their own righteousness to excuse or justify them, all objections against the justice of their judge, that their consciences will condemn them only and not God. Seeing that such punishments are just heightens the concept that salvation is by grace alone. This is the sixth issue that I want to deal with. This was a marvelous truth to Edwards and he desired his hearers to know that their hope rested in the mercy of God alone. Salvation must be by the almighty working of God both externally and internally, objectively and subjectively. He sorted out for his parishioners how unreasonable they would be to imagine that they could put God under obligation to have respect to anything they did while still his enemy. None of their prayers, reading, attending, or preparation of any sort would change either the justness of the verdict of condemnation or the enmity of their hearts. Such shows of respect and kindness are abhorrent to God. It equals treachery like that of Joab who inquired concerning Amasa's health while he thrust a knife into him. What if you do pray to God? Is he obliged to hear the prayers of an enemy? What if you have taken a great deal of pains? Is God obliged to give heaven for the prayers of an enemy? He may justly abhor your prayers and all that you do in religion as the flattery of a mortal enemy. Grace, therefore, is necessary in such a condition. All of our blessings are what we have by purchase. And the purchase is made of God. All the blessings come from God. He gives the price for the purchase. Or rather, He gives the purchaser. And God is the purchaser. Yea, God is both the purchaser and the price. For Christ, who is God, purchased these blessings for us by offering up Himself as the price of our salvation. In order to purchase eternal life, He sacrificed Himself. By the sacrifice of Himself, Hebrews 7.27, He purchased pardon from sin and deliverance from hell. By Christ's righteousness, we also have purchased for us the favor of God and satisfying happiness that is a happiness that is fully answerable to the capacity and cravings of our souls. He has purchased for us an eternal vision of God, conversation and communion with Him, conformity to Him, and eternal praise of Him. Christians are possessors of all things, incorruptible riches in heaven, but He also makes them qualified for these gifts. We must repent and believe, but as we cannot do this of ourselves, Christ has purchased this also for all the elect. He also purchases their perseverance and holiness and by His death has made sure that all remaining sin will be taken out of their hearts at death. They shall be made perfectly holy. Everything outside of us and inside of us is a result of purchase and is bestowed in a sovereign way. Christ has purchased all, both objective and inherent good, not only a portion to be enjoyed by us, but all those inherent qualifications necessary to our enjoyment of it. He has purchased not only justification, but sanctification and glorification, both holiness and happiness. Glory, holiness, and happiness will be brought to its purest state only in the company of the triune God in the state of blessedness in heaven. Edward sought to hold this infinite beauty before his auditors as a consistent motivation to seek salvation as the most desired circumstance of existence and to encourage believers that the joy they sense in the love of God here will be both purified and increased in exponential ways in the world of love that is heaven. In God's right hand, there are pleasures forevermore. And since heaven is a feast in which we sup with Christ, we shall eat and drink forever and never be glutted. We may eat and drink abundantly and never be in danger of excesses. Heaven also, as Edward puts it, is a world of love. It is a place that God resides most fully and intensely in love, the perfection of all righteousness and virtue. It is the place in which the infinite perfection of love within the triune God is seen and enjoyed for its intrinsic beauty and each of the non-divine inhabitants are objects of the streams that flow from this fountain. Such love is perfect and shoves out all envy and malice and jealousy and slander, all lust and evil of all sorts, and becomes the perfect display of all beauty and excellence, so much so that its exhilarating potential can never be exhausted. It shall be found to be in perfect accord with wisdom, intellect, knowledge, and understanding. It shall so purify the affections that sincere praise and love also flows from all the finite inhabitants of heaven in perfect proportion and symmetry toward God and one another, consistent with the degree of blessedness in the full variety of capacities that they enjoy. Regeneration is the installation of a portion of that holy love from heaven in the heart. In regeneration, the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts and we have tasted and thus desire to be filled with it. The heart is so captivated by this good that the regenerate choose it for its own sake beyond all worldly good. So in this life, the strife and struggle of the new man is after holiness. He has an inward active heavenly seed in him and struggles against sin because of ardent desires to be holy. As heaven is filled with love, so hell is filled with hate. As heaven is the place of perfect expression of the love of God, so hell is the place of the perfect expression of the hate of God. He has no other use for it but there to satisfy his hatred of sin and sinners. With as much earnestness, pathos, and clarity as possible, preaching must seek to insert these truths as motivating factors, as elements of sensibility, into the minds of those who attend to this appointed medium of transforming truth. Such doctrinal preaching cries for our attention. particularly in a clear focus on how all of these doctrines point to our absolute dependence on God for the execution of it all. At this very point, preaching was notably altered from the second decade of the 19th century into the present. When Edwards noticed a tendency in some of the Boston preachers to compromise on this aspect of the message, He preached in a public lecture in Boston in 1731, a message entitled, God Glorified in Man's Dependence. His second point of use at the close of the sermon serves as a prophetic warning for the future of preaching. Hence, these doctrines and schemes of divinity that are in any respect opposite to such an absolute and universal dependence on God, derogate from His glory and thwart the design of our redemption. And such are those schemes that put the creature in God's stead in any of the mentioned respects that exalt man into the place of either Father, Son, or Holy Ghost in anything pertaining to our redemption. However, they may allow of a dependence of the redeemed on God, yet they deny dependence that is so absolute and universal. They own an entire dependence on God for some things, but not for others. They own that we depend on God for the gift and acceptance of a Redeemer, but deny so absolute a dependence on Him for the obtaining of an interest in the Redeemer. They own an absolute dependence on the Father for giving His Son and on the Son for working out redemption, but not so entire a dependence on the Holy Ghost for conversion and a being in Christ and so coming to a title to His benefits. They owned a dependence on God for the means of grace, but not absolutely for the benefit and success of those means. A partial dependence on the power of God for obtaining and exercising holiness, but not a mere dependence on the arbitrary and sovereign grace of God. They own a dependence on the free grace of God for a reception into His favor, so far that it is without any proper merit, but not as it is without being attracted or moved with any excellency. They own a partial dependence on Christ as He through whom we have life, and having purchased new terms of life, but still hold that the righteousness through which we have life is inherent in ourselves, as it was under the first covenant. Now, whatever scheme is inconsistent with our entire dependence on God for all, and of having all of Him, all of Him, through Him, and in Him, it is repugnant to the design and tenor of the gospel, and robs it of that which God accounts its luster and glory." The theory of preaching which confronted and denied that very idea which Edwards considered paramount changed not only the doctrinal content. of preaching, but eventually relegated doctrine to the ignoble status of the missing link in the process. The converting power of the will became more prominent than the place of truth as the medium fit for the converting work of the Spirit. As conversion came to be more and more in the hands of men, sinners were less and less convinced that they were in the hands of an angry God. The power and passion of Edwards receded into the distant past of literary curiosities to be viewed with puzzlement in high school American literature classes. Even more puzzlement, however, would define the faces present in the ordinary pastor's conference today should Edwards somehow span the centuries and remind the gathering of the sobering responsibility of being entrusted with the glorious gospel of the blessed God. Let's pray. Father, we pray that you would indeed seal these things in our hearts that we may recognize that your truth is great and powerful and wonderful and glorious and that it is something that should call forth the love of our souls. Help us to realize that we have not loved it because we have been so sinful and so opposed to you and help us to treasure the reality that it is only by your grace and your sovereign mercy toward us that You have drawn us to see the glory of this Gospel, the glory of Christ, that You have changed our hearts and our affections so that we flee to Him and we trust in Him. Seal these things in our experience and in our mind that we might live to Your glory. In Jesus' name, Amen. I hope you're jotting down some questions for our Q&A later. I know I am, and I look forward to that time. We're going to take a break. It is just about 4 o'clock now, so let's meet back in here at 4.15 for our final session.