I grew up in the town of Enfield, a river town on Connecticut's northern border with a rich history. My father was the son of Italian immigrants who arrived in the early 20th century. But my mother's side of the family has been traced back to one of New England's most notable Puritan preachers, Thomas Hooker, who led a group of settlers in 1636 to found the city of Hartford. From there, the pioneers migrated north to Enfield. Enfield was established in 1683. I suppose it was since then that my ancestors were born, raised, married, worked, raised their families, and died within just a few miles of where I grew up. Enfield grew up too, left her Puritan beginnings, and became a thriving and diverse economic community. And not all of her change was good. Her religious life had drifted into a ritualistic Christianity, that for the most part was in name only. She needed to be spiritually revived. That was something only God could do. My parents were interested in history, and so at some point I heard of the famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, that had been preached in my town by a congregational minister named Jonathan Edwards. To most people in Enfield, this man was all but forgotten, along with the sermon he preached and the great revival called the Great Awakening that had swept through these New England towns over 200 years ago. The Meeting House was gone too, but from my youth I was aware of the small boulder that marked the location where that sermon was preached. I grew up in the 1960s when it was popular to question authority, but mostly the only things I questioned were everything that was moral and good. I thought I was an independent thinker, but in many ways I was really just a follower like everyone else. By my teenage years I had decided that the Bible was just a storybook, that Jesus Christ was a myth, that there was no God, and that atheism was cool. My friends and I thought being a skeptic was the modern thing to do, but it's not new at all. The book of Job, written over 2,000 years ago, tells of skeptics in his day who said to God, Depart from us, for we do not desire the knowledge of your ways. Who is the almighty that we should serve him? And what profit do we have if we pray to him? I lived in that unbelief until I was nearly 20 years old, and never in those years met a single person who even claimed to be a born-again Christian. This was modern America. The age in which Jonathan Edwards lived was not so very different. He was born in Windsor, Connecticut, just down the road from Enfield, in 1703. He grew up about 200 years after an earlier spiritual revival, one of the greatest in called the Reformation. It was a time of great spiritual activity, translating the Bible into English, German and other languages, and distributing it among the common people. The writing of deep and profound Christian literature, biblical preaching leading to the conversion of thousands and the transformation of whole nations, yet at the same time intense persecution and martyrdom, which resulted from an intensity of belief that made Christians more willing to die than to compromise. But by Edward's time, that revival had long since passed. New generations had come along. Many of the churches were spiritually apathetic and dying. Church attendance was still a habit for large numbers of people, but perhaps for most of them it was little more than tradition. When Edwards describes the young people in his day, it sounds very much like those of today. He writes, licentiousness for some years greatly prevailed among the youth of the town. There were many of them very much addicted to night walking and frequenting the tavern, and lewd practices wherein some by their example exceedingly corrupted others. At the newly founded Yale College, which he attended from 1716 to 1720, he observed among his classmates monstrous impieties and acts of immorality, stealing of hens, geese, turk pigs, meat, wood, breaking people's windows, cursing, swearing and damning, and using all manner of ill language. In the Bible, these things are called the works of the flesh. They haven't changed since the beginning of time. Edwards believed, as Jesus taught, that a person's heart is revealed by his fruits, his words and actions. If that was true, then the people of New England were desperately in need of revival. They weren't merely in a spiritual slumber. Most of them were spiritually dead, under God's condemnation, lost and in need of spiritual life. beginning in the late 1730s. Spontaneous reports from many sources and locations in New England came flooding in of increasing numbers of people being shaken to their core with conviction. Many had sat under Bible preaching since childhood, but it had never cut through to their hearts. Now, they were responding. Edwards wrote, It is astonishing to see the alteration that there is in some town where before was but little appearance of religion. Prior to July 8, 1741, the awakening had come to many neighboring towns, but Enfield had been passed by. This makes the account of that day all the more remarkable. Edward's own church was in Northampton, Massachusetts. But as the revival spread, Edwards, wanting to be useful, often served in other locations as guest preacher. Speaking at Enfield on that Sunday morning in 1741, he chose as his text Deuteronomy 32.35. Their foot shall slide in due time. He then proceeded to comment on that passage. In this verse is threatened the vengeance of God on the wicked unbelieving Israelite who were God's visible people and who lived under the means of grace but who notwithstanding all God's wonderful works towards them remained as in verse 28, void of counsel, having no understanding in them. The expression I have chosen for my text, their foot shall slide in due time, seems to imply the following things. Number one, that they were always exposed to destruction. Number two, to sudden unexpected destruction, as he that walks in slippery places is every moment liable to fall. Number three, that they are liable to fall of themselves without being thrown down by the hand of another. And number four, that the reason why they are not fallen already and do not fall now is only that God's appointed time is not come. The observation from the words that I would now insist upon is this. There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell but the mere pleasure of God. By the mere pleasure of God, I mean His sovereign pleasure, His arbitrary will restrained by no obligation hindered by no manner of difficulty, any more than if nothing else but God's mere will had in the least degree or in any respect whatsoever any hand in the preservation of wicked men one moment. The truth of this observation may appear by the following consideration. 1. There is no lack of power in God to cast wicked men into hell at any Men's hands cannot be strong when God rises up. He is not only able to cast wicked men into hell, but he can most easily do it. What are we that we should think to stand before him at whose rebuke the earth trembles and before whom the rocks are thrown down? Two, they deserve to be cast into hell so that divine justice never stands in the way. It makes no objection against God's using his power at any moment to destroy them. The sword of divine justice is every moment brandished over their heads and it is nothing but the hand of arbitrary mercy and God's mere will that holds it back. 3. They are already under a sentence of condemnation to hell. They do not only justly deserve to be cast down thither, but the sentence of the law of God, that eternal and unchangeable 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 already to hell. John 3.18 says, He that believeth not is condemned already, so that every unconverted man properly belongs to hell. That is his place. 4. They are now the objects of that very same anger and wrath of God that is expressed in the torments of hell. And the reason they do not go down to hell at each moment is not because God, in whose power they are, is not then very angry with them. Yea, God is a great deal more angry with great numbers that are now on earth. with many that are now in this congregation, who it may be are at ease, than he is with many of those who are now in the flames of hell, so that it is not because God is unmindful of their wickedness, the wrath of God burns against them. Their damnation does not slumber. The pit is prepared, the fire is made ready, the furnace is now hot, ready to receive them. The flames do now rage and glow, the glittering sword is sharp and held over them, and the pit has opened its mouth under them. The devil stands ready to fall upon them and sees them as his own at what moment God should permit them. They belong to him. He has their souls in his possession and under his dominion. If God should withdraw his hand by which they are restrained, the demons would in one moment fly upon their poor souls. The old serpent is gaping for them. Hell opens its mouth wide to receive them, and if God should permit it they would be hastily swallowed up and lost. 6. There are in the souls of wicked men those hellish principles reigning that would presently kindle and flame out into hell fire if it were not for God's restraints. The souls of the wicked are in Scripture compared to the troubled sea, Isaiah 57.20. For the present God restrains their wickedness by His mighty power. But if God should withdraw that restraining power, it would soon carry all before it. Sin is the ruin and misery of the soul. It is destructive in its nature. And if God should leave it without restraint, there would need nothing else to make the soul perfectly miserable. 7. It is no security to wicked men for one moment that there are no visible means of death at hand. It is no security to a natural man that he is now in health, and that he does not now see the way which he should immediately go out of the world by any accident, and that there is no visible danger of any kind in his circumstances. Unconverted men walk over the pit of hell on a rotten covering, and there are innumerable places in this covering so weak that they will not bear their weight, and these places are not seen. All the means there are of sinners going out of the world are in God's hands and so are universally and absolutely subject to His power and determination. 8. Natural men's prudence and care to preserve their own lives or the care of others to preserve them do not secure them for a moment. 9. All wicked men's pains and contrivances, which they use to escape hell while they continue to reject Christ, and so remain wicked men, do not secure them from hell one moment. Almost every natural man that hears of hell flatters himself that he shall escape it. He depends upon himself for his own security. He flatters himself in what he has done, and in what he is now doing or what he intends to do. But the foolish children of men miserably delude themselves in their own schemes and, in confidence of their own strength and wisdom, they trust in nothing but a shadow. The greater part of those who previously have lived under the same means of grace and are now dead are undoubtedly gone to hell. If we could speak with them and inquire of them one by one, whether they expected ever to be the subjects of misery, we doubtless should hear one after another reply, No, I never intended to come here. I had laid out matters otherwise in my mind. I thought I planned well for myself. I thought my scheme was good. I intended to take effectual care, but it came upon me unexpected. I did not look for it at that time and in that manner. It came as a thief. Death outwitted me. God's wrath was too quick for me. And when I was saying peace and safety, then sudden destruction came upon me. 10. God has laid himself under no obligation to keep any natural man out of hell one moment. God certainly has made no promises but what are contained in the covenant of grace, the promises that are given in Christ. But surely they who are not the children of the covenant have no share in the promises of the covenant of grace. So that whatever some have imagined and pretended about promises made to natural man's earnest seeking and knocking, whatever pains a natural man takes in religion, whatever prayers he makes, till he believes in Christ, God is under no manner of obligation to keep him a moment from eternal destruction. so that thus it is that natural men are held in the hand of God over the pit of hell. They have deserved the fiery pit and are already sentenced to it. And God is dreadfully provoked. His anger is as great towards them as to those who are now actually suffering the executions of the fierceness of His wrath in hell. Neither is God in the least bound by any promise to hold them up one moment. The devil is waiting for them. Hell is gaping for them. The flames gather and flash about them and desire to lay hold on them and swallow them up. The fire pent up in their own hearts is struggling to break out, and they have no interest in any mediator. There are no means within reach that can be any security to them. In short, they have no refuge, nothing to take hold of. All that preserves them every moment is the mere arbitrary will and uncovenanted, unobliged forbearance. of an angry God. And now for application. The use of this awful subject may be for awakening unconverted persons in this congregation. This that you have heard is the case of every one of you that are out of Christ. That world of misery, that lake of burning brimstone is extended abroad under you. There is the dreadful pit of the glowing flames of the wrath of God. There is hell's wide gaping mouth open, and you have nothing to stand upon, nor anything to take hold of. There is nothing between you and hell but the air. It is only the power and mere pleasure of God that holds you up. You are probably not aware of this. You find you are kept out of hell, but do not see the hand of God in it, but look at other things, such as the good state of your bodily health, your care of your own life, and the means you use for your own preservation. But, indeed, these things are nothing. If God should withdraw His hand, they would avail no more to keep you from falling than the thin air to hold up a person who was suspended in it. Were it not for the sovereign pleasure of God, the earth would not bear you one moment, for you are a burden to it. The creation groans with you, and the world would spew you out were it not for God's sovereign hand. There are the black clouds of God's wrath, now hanging directly over your heads, full of the dreadful storm and big with thunder. Were it not for the restraining hand of God, it would immediately burst forth upon you. The sovereign pleasure of God for the present stays His rough wind. Otherwise it would come with fury, and your destruction would come like a whirlwind, and you would be like the chaff of the summer threshing floor. Thus all of you who have never passed under a great change of heart by the mighty power of the Spirit of God upon your souls. All you who were never born again and made new creatures and raised from being dead in sin to a state of new and previously unexperienced light and life are in the hands of an angry God. However, you may have reformed your life in many things, and may have had religious affections, and may keep up a form of religion in your families and prayer closets and in the house of God. It is nothing but His mere pleasure that keeps you from being this moment swallowed up in everlasting destruction. However unconvinced you may be now of the truth of what you hear, soon you will be fully convinced of it. The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you and is dreadfully provoked. His wrath toward you burns like fire. He looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire, and there is no other reason to be given why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning. but that God's hand has held you up. There is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to hell, since you have sat there in the house of God, provoking His pure eyes by your sinful, wicked manner of attending His solemn worship. O sinner, consider the fearful danger you are in. It is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit full of the fire of wrath that you were held over in the hand of that God whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it and burn it asunder, and you have no interest in any mediator and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you have ever done, nothing that you can do to induce God to spare you one moment. But this is the dismal case of every soul in this congregation that has not been born again, however moral and strict, sober and religious they may otherwise be. O, that you would consider it whether you be young or old! There is reason to think that there are many in this congregation now hearing this discourse who will actually be the subjects of this very misery to all eternity. We know not who they are, or in what seats they sit, or what thoughts they now have. May be that they are now at ease, and hear all these things without much disturbance, and are now flattering themselves that they are not the person spoken of, promising themselves that they will escape, it would be a wonder if some that are now present should not be in hell in a very short time, even before this year is out. Your damnation does not slumber. It will come swiftly, and in all probability, very suddenly upon many of you. And now you have an extraordinary opportunity. A day wherein Christ has thrown the door of mercy wide open and stands in calling and crying with a loud voice to poor sinners. A day in which many are flocking to Him and pressing into the Kingdom of God. Many are daily coming from the East, West, North and South. Many that were very lately in the same miserable condition that you are in are now in a happy state. with their hearts filled with love to him who has loved them, and washed them from their sins in his own blood, and rejoicing in hope of the glory of God. How awful is it to be left behind at such a day, to see so many others feasting while you are pining and perishing, to see so many rejoicing and singing for joy of heart while you have cause to mourn for sorrow of heart and howl for vexation of spirit? How can you rest one moment in such a condition? Are not your souls as precious as the souls of the people at Suffield, where they are flocking from day to day to Christ? Therefore let every one that is out of Christ now awake and fly from the wrath to come. The wrath of Almighty God is now undoubtedly hanging over a great part of this congregation. Let everyone fly out of Sodom. Haste and escape for your lives. Look not behind you. Escape to the mountain lest you be consumed. Before the sermon was done, writes an eyewitness, there was a great moaning and crying throughout the whole house. What shall I do to be saved? so that the minister was obliged to desist, the shrieks and cries were piercing and amazing. Looking back over 200 years later, that sermon, the Great Awakening and the man Jonathan Edwards have been grossly distorted. Seems that the modern image of Edwards as being harsh, stern and self-righteous were invented by a later generation that did not know Edwards. In fact, there is abundant evidence to show that Edwards was a loving husband, a gracious father, a gentle pastor and teacher. Though even non-Christian historians acknowledge that Edwards was one of the most brilliant intellects of his time, he was an unassuming and genuinely spiritual man. A man who, for the rest of his life after the awakening, continued to humbly reevaluate his role in it and how much of it was a genuine work of God. Another misconception about Edwards and his preaching is that many assume he was a charismatic hellfire and brimstone preacher in the modern tradition, commanding the attention of his hearers with powerful oratory, the charismatic presence of his personality, and an emotional gospel invitation at the end of the sermon. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is very possible that Edwards read much of his sermon word for word. He seldom if ever raised his voice, One eyewitness of his preaching said, quote, Mr. Edwards used no gestures, but looked straightforward, end quote. In fact, the modern so-called gospel invitation would not be invented for at least another 100 years. Rather than structuring the evangelistic service to produce the greatest possible number of professions of faith, Edwards would have genuinely feared doing anything that would produce false converts. He rightly believed that if God was going to move the hearts of the hearers, he would do so through the straightforward preaching of scripture without any manipulation or tricks on man's part. This is because Edwards had a strong belief in what are often called the doctrines of sovereign grace. Though these biblical truths are deep and incomprehensible to human understanding, they are often summarized in the following five points. The first is the total depravity of all mankind. Man's complete inability to save himself or even come to belief and faith in Christ without being brought to life by the Spirit of God working upon his heart. Before this work of God, man is completely dead in sin, separated from God. He is said in scripture to have a heart of stone and to be an enemy of God. Any apparent good that he can do is only the result of upbringing, conscience, or other graces common to mankind, but it cannot lead him to a genuine awareness of his own need or to salvation. Edwards believed we are saved only by God's unconditional election or choice, which was determined before the creation of the world. Nothing we have done or can ever do, not even the decision to receive Christ, has any merit in saving us. It is by God's grace alone. This doctrine is most offensive to the pride of man. Shortly after Jesus said, no man can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, we are told that from that time many of his disciples went back and walked with him no more. Paul the Apostle, knowing that some of his readers would be offended by this teaching, defends God's right to be God in Romans 9, verses 20 and 21. Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, why have you made me like this? Does not the potter have power over the clay from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor? Yet this choice or election on God's part doesn't diminish His grace for a moment. God's mercy is offered to all, for the gospel call to salvation in Christ is offered to whoever will come. It is vitally important, however, to give all the credit to Him and to his sovereign choice. Third, Edwards believed that Christ died specifically for his own elect, paying the ultimate price to redeem a particular people who would enjoy a personal and living relationship with him. This means that everyone for whom Christ died will come to him and be saved. What kind of powerless death on the cross would require his blood to be shed for those who would remain his enemies die in their sins and never be saved. But his death was not lacking in power. His blood was sufficient to save everyone for whom it was intended. His death was for his own people, his sheep, his bride, his body, those for whom he has shown great favor. Greater love has no man than this, than that Christ would lay down his own life for his friends. Fourth, Edwards believed that every genuine calling from God is effectual, that is, powerfully effective, so that when a person genuinely comes to Christ, there will be a clear evidence of the work of God in bringing about a new spiritual rebirth. This is sometimes called irresistible grace, for the one who is truly saved will not resist God's power, but respond to it, and the results will be life transforming. for God's purposes will not be thwarted. As the scripture says, it is only by God's grace that a person who has no fear of God and whose heart has enthroned many idols can be brought to its knees to worship the true God of heaven. Through God's irresistible grace, a heart of stone can be made a heart of flesh, a dead spirit can be made alive, a barren fruit tree can be made to bear fruit to God, Finally, Edwards believed that all who were truly saved could never again be lost, not merely making it to heaven, but continuing in the life of faith. True saving grace will cause a Christian to endure to the end, to be delivered from the full force of Satan's power, to mature in faith against all human odds, to stand in the midst of a world that is no friend to those who are serious about their faith. In that sense, Paul's testimony near the end of his life is really the testimony of all true believers, when he says, I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Finally there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord the righteous judge will give to me on that day, and not to me only, but also to all who have loved his appearing. These teachings, which are nothing more than the belief that God is in control of all things, even the heart of man, are clearly taught in Scripture and were once considered basic to the Christian faith. They were the historical foundation of nearly every Christian denomination and are found in nearly every great creed and confession of faith that the Church has held to throughout her history. They were taught by Jesus and the Apostles, early Church Fathers, the reformers, the Puritans, the early Christians who came to America. They have been held by Catholics, Lutherans, Anglicans, Congregationalists, Baptists, Presbyterians and many other denominations. In that sense they represent the unity, the oneness of the Church's understanding of Scripture throughout the centuries. Contrary to the claims of many who say that the doctrines of sovereign grace are a hindrance to the spread of the Gospel and to genuine revival, these teachings were the lifeblood of the Reformation and of the early revivals that swept through the professing Christian world and revitalized the Church. Like Jonathan Edwards, we believe these challenging truths are necessary for the world to hear. But because they humble man's pride in himself and in his own spiritual abilities, they are not natural to our human understanding. And so they've been neglected by much of the modern church and even called divisive by many. Some people from the start would mock a man who would preach a sermon called Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. That shouldn't surprise us. Paul the Apostle himself faced great opposition to the preaching of the truth. even from those within the church, and at times had to stand almost alone. Many in Edward's day didn't like what he had to say either. But what he said is what the scriptures clearly teach. We see in his sermon titles a sober balance between the absolute demands of God's law and the freeness of God's grace. Today, as then, we need to follow Scripture's advice and examine our souls regularly to determine whether our faith is real or not. For all of our Christian activity, so much of which is man-centered, we are a lost generation. Our land and our churches, as in Edward's day, have fallen into spiritual apathy and unbelief. Thousands among us delude themselves into thinking that they are all set, but in truth they're under the condemnation of God and rushing towards His fearful judgment. Without a genuine spiritual reawakening, which can come only from God, as a nation we will go the way of ancient Rome and others that crumbled because of their sins and their unbelief in the truth. We need more men like Johnson Edwards. who spoke the truth even when it cost him dearly. We call upon ministers of God to rise up, even though it may cost us our prestige and our power, and though it will likely drive some people away, to speak the hard truth to a dying world. And we call those who are wandering spiritually, even those who may already profess to be Christians, but who sense their faith is powerless and not genuine, to come in true and simple faith to Jesus Christ, casting your care upon Him where there is still mercy and forgiveness of sins. In Isaiah chapter 55, the voice of a compassionate God calls us, O everyone who thirsts, come to the waters, and you who have no money, come, buy and eat. Yes, come, Buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and let your soul delight itself in abundance. Incline your ear and come to me. Here and your soul shall live, and I will make an everlasting covenant with you. Assure mercies of David. Seek the Lord while He may be found. Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to the Lord, and He will have mercy on him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. so so you you so Yeah.