This afternoon I listened to the sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” by Jonathan Edwards. (Of course, it is not the real Jonathan Edwards, but another person reading his sermon.) This was the probably the most famous sermon ever preached on American soil. This sermon in large part sparked the Great Awakening, one of the greatest if not the greatest revival America ever experienced. Even when I was in high school my history and literature books talked about this sermon (and ridiculed it!). It is amazing how much preaching has changed in less than 200 years. The Bible hasn’t changed. The truth hasn’t changed, but just as the Bible says, “the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.” (2 Timothy 4:3-4) Jonathan Edwards later became the president of Princeton University. Although many did not like what he had to say even in his day, there were still many who were willing to tolerate the truth.
“[I wish] to lie low before God, as in the dust; that I might be nothing, and that God might be all, that I might become as a little child.” Jonathan Edwards