Homiletics and Jonathan Edwards: A Wonderful Union

Though Jonathon Edwards believed and emphasized a personal experience as a result of God's redeeming grace, he did not believe in manipulating his hearers in order to produce this experience. Being a staunch Calvinist, Edwards believed God the Holy Spirit must intervene for sinners to respond; but, when God the Holy Spirit does intervene, He produces a clear experience. As a good puritan, Edwards emphasized Christians living a holy life as a result of experiencing this redeeming grace. The experience thus was continual in a sense, due to God the Holy Spirit's constant work in the individual.

Because Edwards believed Christ moved and changed lives through His Word, he simply sought to faithfully teach this truth. Edwards did not emphasize the "style" of the message, but the message itself. His reasoning behind reading a manuscript with little emotion was his trust in God moving through His Word, instead of his hearers responding to his abilities. Due to God moving through the Word, Edwards believed the Word simply must be clear in order for sinners to repent and be saved.

Personally, I believe the Evangelical church could learn much from Edwards. There is such an overemphasis on the ability of the speaker to convey the message instead of upon the message itself. It is difficult because most of those in the pews have been raised by TV sets. Instead of Christians listening to the Word of God because God wrote it, many will only listen if it is packaged the way they like it. The package thus has become the emphasis instead of "Thus says the Lord". Can you imagine our church members back in the first century? Jesus would have bored them to death. Can you imagine them saying, "Hey Jesus, could you throw a joke in every now and then? Could you do a better job of keeping my attention? Etc.?" The reality is that God says the same thing today as He did back then... He demands that we listen, not because of the speaker, but because the speaker is preaching HIS Word.

Edwards would be deemed irrelevant and boring by many within evangelicalism today. His messages however could be effective today as well, depending if God the Holy Spirit decided to bless today as He did back then. God the Holy Spirit is the One who grows His church; and if the church is growing as a result of individual leaders instead of the truth of Christ, then it is not really growing. Thus, churches in the U.S. rise and fall on the leaders instead of on Christ. There are few true churches as a result. If God can use a donkey in the Old Testament to convey His Word, then any old vessel will do. Edwards was this vessel during the Great Awakening.