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“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” by Jonathan Edwards is the most famous sermon ever preached on American soil.  We have reproduced the entire text of the sermon here in .pdf format for easy download and distribution. It includes a brand new introduction with information about Edwards, the historical setting during the Great Awakening, and what the sermon says to us today.

It will remain available here on our download page.

Phil

“For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the Law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach statutes and ordinances in Israel.” (Ezra7:10)

I love this character, Ezra. He was an honorable man, chosen by God to lead in the rebuilding of the Temple. He was not a warrior or a king; nor even a thundering prophet. He was a “plain” man, faithful to his calling as “a skilled scribe in the Law of Moses” (v6). In other words, he was a “workman in the Word” (see 2 Timothy 2:15).

Note what verse 10 says. Ezra gave himself with a serious commitment to “seeking”, “doing” and “teaching” the Word of God. Some people might see these skills, this occupation, as mundane and unglamorous, but God seeks out such a servant to use for His purposes – for “He has magnified His Word above all His Name”. (Psalm 138:2)

Ezra’s distinction was in his devotion to his calling. He “prepared his heart” for it. A lot of people have been deemed great Christian leaders for their charisma or natural leadership ability, but the Christians who have changed the course of world history for God’s glory have been those that have buried themselves in the Word of God, seeking to know His message, and have meticulously applied it to their own lives to be changed by it, and only then have emerged to teach it to others. This is the only right order – “SEEKING” (studying) … “DOING” … then “TEACHING”.

Think of St. Augustine, Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, John Owen, Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, John Wesley, Charles Spurgeon, and others, who “though dead yet still speak” … men bent over parchments and books by lamplight, wrestling with the great truths of God, and emerging broken and humbled, walking with a spiritual “limp” as real as Jacob’s physical limp after his wrestling match with God (Genesis 32). And only then did they dare to open their mouths and with trembling lips instruct others.

What a contrast to the flippancy of our day. The spotlight seems to fall on any novice who can tell a joke with good timing. If a preacher comes out with something that seems ”new” and pithy, it is received with oohs and aahs, regardless of whether it has any substantive basis in rightly interpreted Scripture.

Thank God there are still Ezras. In fact, there is a growing column of “soldiers of the Book”, who love God’s Word and are dedicated to SEEKING, DOING and only then TEACHING it. We need more.

There is a clear challenge here, of course, to pastors and preachers. But not exclusively. Every Christian ought to be a seeker, a doer, and a teacher of God’s Word. Can I challenge you with the following:

I began to share my heart on some of this in our Sunday night prayer meeting this past weekend, in a message entitled “What’s wrong with the gospel” (Part 1).

When you consider the days we are living in, and look into the Scriptures for light to understand the times, several facts are self-evident. I am not claiming any prophetic authority for these things; they are my observations.

1. America is under the judgment of God.

I am not referring to the outcome of the recent election here at all. Time will reveal whether the new government is a blessing or curse to the people. Our role as Christians, according to Romans chapter 13, is (1) to accept that God, Who is sovereign, has superintended the appointments, and (2) to submit to their laws and leadership in all matters that do not require us to break the higher law of God. (3) We must continually pray for the President, and all others in office, in order that “we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.” (1 Timothy 2:2)

Some of President-elect Obama’s policies are clearly anti-Christian. His willingness to condone the continuing wholesale slaughter of the unborn through a Freedom of Choice Act (which he is on record stating he will sign as his first order of business in office), and his enthusiastic support of same-sex marriage legislation are just two of the most blatant examples. For Christians these are not political issues that we can be divided on in good conscience. These are moral issues that we must be united on because we are bound by the plain teaching of God’s Word and the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

But let us be clear. Barack Obama is NOT the instigator of these blights; he himself is the product of a morally decayed society that has been headed down this road for some years. I am not at all convinced that his opponent would have offered any godlier leadership (although his policies on the two issues above would have been more palatable for Christians). John McCain is also the product of a society morally adrift. His personal life sadly bears the marks of that.

The politics aside, though, there are clear evidences of God’s judgment against America. The present financial crisis is just a part of it – the result of years of greed and covetousness. Some have pointed to the recent increase in natural disasters, which quite possibly are the hand of God. To scoff at that possibility, as I’ve heard church leaders in this country doing, shows an ignorance of Biblical teaching.

But in the end, how do we know the judgment of God is already here? Because we are seeing flagrant immoral perversions not only commonplace now, but celebrated and boasted about. What the Bible calls “vile affections”, men and women leaving natural relations and “burning in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error.” (Romans 1:27) Disease will not stop, or even slow, them in their pursuit of sin.

But then, secondly, there is (if you can imagine it) an even WORSE predicament:

2. The American CHURCH is under the judgment of God.

(Please note: I am using the term “the American church”, but having lived in both Britain and Australia also, I know that I could just as easily use the term “the Western church”. The problems are not restricted to the USA, although she has been the source of much of the rot.)

“Behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord GOD, “That I will send a famine on the land, Not a famine of bread, Nor a thirst for water, But of hearing the words of the LORD. They shall wander from sea to sea, And from north to east; They shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the LORD, But shall not find it.” (Amos 8:11-12)

Amos prophesied to the Northern Kingdom of Judah just about 30 years before they were carried off into captivity. It is a warning that because the people continued to reject God, they were about to face His hand of judgment. The captivity they would endure, with all its deprivations, would be terrible, but the greater loss would be the ensuing silence from Heaven. A “famine of THE WORD OF GOD”.

Israel had experienced this in her history before. Leading up to the days of the prophet Samuel, “the word of the Lord was rare” (1 Samuel 3:1). There was a lack of true spokesmen for God. We know there were those who held the office of priests, and presumably there were those that claimed to be prophets, but something was terribly wrong with the ministry of God’s word.

Such seasons of spiritual famine are God’s judgment on His people when they ignore His word and live carelessly.

The American church for some years has been experiencing a famine of the word, and the scandalous fact is that we have not even realized it! Our Christian bookstores are jammed with countless resources, our television and radio airwaves are flooded with preaching and teaching, all with the grand result that our people have never been more spiritually malnourished and STARVING for the word of God. If you want evidence of that fact, just look at how easily false teaching is swallowed today. Every novel idea, no matter how banal or heretical, is welcomed with audience “oohs” and “aahs”. What is that but proof of spiritual malnourishment? Listen to the word of God: “To a hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet” (Proverbs 27:7).

The most terrible result of this famine of the word that we have been enduring is that we have, in large part, lost the very core of our Christian truth – the gospel itself. We have mangled it until it has degenerated into “come to Jesus and He’ll give you a better life”. The law of God, sin, judgment, hell, repentance, and holiness are all out of vogue, and the result is a half-gospel that is robbed of its power to save.

But this is where there is great hope.

3. When God has chastised His people in the past it has been for the purpose of ultimately delivering them.

Whenever the church has experienced the grace of God in revival, it has followed on the heels of spiritual dearth and declension. The history of awakenings shows that, in the providence of God, it is always allowed to become darkest just before His dawn.

Some Biblical examples of this principle:

(1) Romans 8:20 says that, “the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope;” Here is the big picture of human history. God has cursed the very ground of this world, allowing the ravages of sin to run their course, for the ultimate purpose of redemption.

(2) In the Old Testament we read about God allowing Israel to be carried off into exile, not because He was finished with them, but for their discipline so that He might yet bring them back and fulfill His purposes through them.

(3) God works by this principle right down to individual persons. Paul wrote to the church in Corinth about the immoral member, and told them to “deliver such an one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh” (1 Corinthians 5:5). The church’s discipline, even to the point of excommunication, was designed in the hope of ultimately seeing the sinner humbled and restored. (And evidently he was – 2 Corinthians 2:6-8).

The point I would make is that God’s judgment on the Church in America is not the signal that He has determined to cast us away, but rather that He is disciplining us for our restoration. When we recover our desperation for Him, the light will flood in again for our revival.

Which brings us to the moment at hand.

4. A largely unnoticed reformation is underway in the Church.

I realize there are several groups that have made a claim like this in recent years. The so-called “Emergent Church Movement” talk about a revolution, but what they are preaching (regurgitated liberalism) simply does not have the power to revolutionize anything. Thankfully!

Before he died, revivalist Leonard Ravenhill said in a radio interview that he was quite sure there would be another revival in America. He believed that there would be no superstars at the helm of it, but rather that it would come about through local churches, in answer to fervent prayer, and in the normal course of pastoral preaching. (He referenced the ministry of Jonathan Edwards and other New England ministers of the Great Awakening as a model of this.)

God is raising up a corps of faithful gospel preachers in this land. Paul Washer, in his recent sermon “Ten Indictments Against the Modern Church in America” said,

“There is a great awakening going on in this country. And not only in this country, but in Europe where I have been, and in South America, and in many other places, I see young men going back to the rock from which we were cut. They are reading Spurgeon, and Whitefield; they’re still listening to Ravenhill and Martyn Lloyd Jones and Tozer and Wesley. And it’s a great, incredible movement! Just because popular media and Christianity Today haven’t discovered what’s going on, I want you to know that I would never have dreamed fifteen years ago that I would see the awakening that I’m seeing.”

This reformation must be a movement back to God’s truth at all costs. The true gospel delivered unto us once for all time by the apostles.

The signs of the return of Jesus are all about us; there cannot be any question about it any longer. I see two things on the horizon: HOSTILITY and HARVEST. I expect things are going to get so much harder – and at the same time, so much more wonderful for true followers of Jesus Christ. Let the Word of God loose in the power of the Spirit, and it will bring about a purifying of God’s people. False converts / lukewarm Christians will either fall away OR GET SAVED AND ON FIRE.

Are you ready? We must every day expect the return of our Lord Jesus, and He is coming for a spotless bride. To that end, and for His glory alone … Viva la reformacion!

Admiring them and eulogizing them is a poor replacement for listening to them and learning from them!

“Evermore the Law must prepare the way for the gospel. To overlook this in instructing souls is almost certain to result in false hope, the introduction of a false standard of Christian experience, and to fill the Church with false converts … Time will make this plain.” - Charles Finney

(Time HAS indeed made it plain! See my last post)

 

“Satan, the god of all dissension stirs up daily new sects. And last of all which of all others I should never have foreseen or once suspected, he has raised up a sect such as teach that men should not be terrified by the law, but gently exhorted by the preaching of the grace of Christ.” (Martin Luther)

 

“I do not believe that any man can preach the gospel who does not preach the Law.”

“Lower the Law and you dim the light by which man perceives his guilt; this is a very serious loss to the sinner rather than a gain; for it lessens the likelihood of his conviction and conversion. I say you have deprived the gospel of its ablest auxiliary [its most powerful weapon] when you have set aside the Law. You have taken away from it the schoolmaster that is to bring men to Christ . . . They will never accept grace till they tremble before a just and holy Law. Therefore the Law serves a most necessary purpose, and it must not be removed from its place.” (Charles Haddon Spurgeon)

 

 

“First, then, before you can speak peace to your hearts, you must be made to see, made to feel, made to weep over, made to bewail, your actual transgressions against the Law of God.“ (George Whitefield)

 

“…it is the ordinary method of the Spirit of God to convict sinners by the Law. It is this which, being set home on the conscience, generally breaketh the rocks in pieces. It is more especially this part of the Word of God which is quick and powerful, full of life and energy and sharper than any two-edged sword.”

“Before I can preach love, mercy and grace I must preach sin, law and judgment.”(John Wesley)

“Ask Paul why [the Law] was given. Here is his answer, ‘That every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God’ (Romans 3:19). The Law stops every man’s mouth. I can always tell a man who is near the kingdom of God; his mouth is stopped. This, then, is why God gives us the Law—to show us ourselves in our true colors.”

“The law can only chase a man to Calvary, no further.” (D.L.Moody)

And what more shall we say? Time fails us to tell of John Wycliffe, John Newton, Jonathan Edwards, C.S.Lewis, J.I.Packer, John Bunyan, A.W.Pink, St.Augustine, Matthew Henry, J.C.Ryle, A.B.Earle, A.W.Tozer, D.Martyn Lloyd-Jones, John Stott, John MacArthur, and a multitude of others who God has used to preach His perfect Law (which “converts the soul” Psalm 19:7), and shut men up under that Law, and bring them to the foot of a blood-stained cross.

Pastor Phil

Here are the scandalous observable facts:

• 80-90% of people who are recorded as making “a decision for Christ” in today’s Evangelical churches do not go on to committed discipleship. They are lost to the faith within a very short time, many of them immediately.
• These people will generally be harder to reach again in the future (for simple reasons that we will discuss another day).
• Of the 10-20% that can still be found in church attendance a year later, many join the swelling ranks of evangelicals who demonstrate little or no difference in lifestyle than unbelievers.

What are we to make of this state of affairs? Quite simply this: the Church is full of false conversions.

How has this happened? It is the natural (entirely predictable) result of the “gospel” that is now preached from the majority of Evangelical pulpits worldwide. We are simply not preaching the same message that was fearlessly declared by Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley, George Whitefield, C.H.Spurgeon, D.L.Moody, Charles G.Finney, and a host of others who God so powerfully used to bring untold numbers of unbelievers to thoroughly committed faith in Christ. Our “gospel” in fact is not the same gospel that was preached by the Church-at-large up until the 20th century.

What is the difference? During the last 100 years a monumental shift has taken place. Biblical evangelism (as laid down in the New Testament and modeled in the teaching of Jesus Himself and the early church) uses the Law of God to expose to men their sinfulness and the wrathful judgment that they are subject to when they must stand before a holy God and give an account. Only when a person is convicted of these realities by the Holy Spirit will they truly REPENT and cling to Jesus Christ as their only Savior.

You can sum up the deficiency of today’s Church in one word. The “R” word. The missing grace. REPENTANCE.

What is the ‘gospel’ we are preaching today then? There is no doubt that Ray Comfort has accurately diagnosed the problem when he writes:

 If right now you are saying to yourself, “What’s wrong with that? That sounds like the gospel to me!” - you need to be taken back into God’s Word to see the real message of true gospel preaching:

“The tragedy of modern evangelism is that, around the turn of the twentieth Century, the church forsook the Law in its capacity to convert the soul and drive sinners to Christ. Modern evangelism therefore had to find another reason for sinners to respond to the gospel, and the reason it chose was the issue of ‘life enhancement.’ The gospel degenerated into ‘Jesus Christ will give you peace, joy, love, fulfillment, and lasting happiness.’ Something like this is usually said, ‘You will never find true happiness until you come to the Lord. You have a ‘God-shaped vacuum’ in your heart that only He can fill. God will heal your marriage and take away that addiction problem. He’ll get you out of financial difficulty and be your best friend.’” (Ray Comfort, The Problem with the Modern Gospel.”)

1. Bookmark this blog now to read future posts which will continue on this vital subject.
2. Add your question or comment to these posts and let’s have some good discussion about it.
3. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND you get Ray Comfort’s book “The Way of the Master”. You can download the 1st Chapter for free … HERE. If you’re not a reader, you can watch a video summary of the same concepts entitled “Hell’s Best Kept Secret” … HERE.

Change MUST come!

Pastor Phil