Edwards Summary

This past month I have read through a few of Edwards works.  I began with his sermon “God Glorified in Man’s Dependence” which I would recommend all Christians to indulge.  As far as Edward’s preaching and writing, it is very readable and straightforward.  He was twenty eight when he first preached it.  His basic purpose of the sermon is to demonstrate that desires to get the glory in salvation and how he accomplishes it.
The second sermon I digested was Edward’s, “The Reality of Spiritual Light” which he takes as his text Matthew 16:17.  This sermon is a little more pithy than the previous one mentioned but its main purpose is to illuminate what divine light is, how it is given by God and not man.  It is a decent sermon to digest in answering the issue of the only way people are given an understanding of who Jesus Christ is and come to salvation is through the Spirit alone.
My third reading of Edwards this month was his “Faithful Narrative of a Surprising Work of God”.  I have read this before while researching revival and revivalism in seminary.  It is a good eye witness and pastoral account of what passes for genuine and counterfeit revivals.  One section that is interesting is Edward’s encouragement of what amounts to small groups:
“I proposed to the young people that they should agree among themselves to spend the evenings after lectures in social religion and to that end divide themselves into several companies to meet in various parts of the town; which was accordingly done, and those meetings have been since continued, and the example imitated by elder people”
I finished off with “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” which as I mentioned in a previous post here (see Sunday, June 27, 2010).  A classic line from “Sinners” that gives you a flavor of the content is:
“The sentence of the law of God, that eternal and immutable rule of righteousness that God has fixed between Him and mankind, is gone out against them, and stands against them; so that they are bound over to hell”.
Some of Edwards is difficult to read, I can’t imagine trying to preach in his style him in today’s world.  But he has given us much to think about God’s glory that is sorely lacking in today’s pulpits.  We are better for reading him.
Most of my interviews were not only taken from Edwards works but also Ian Murray’s “Jonathan Edwards: A Biography”, George Marsden’s Biography of Jonathan Edwards, a collection of essays on Edwards entitled “A God Enhanced Vision of All Things: The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards”.