Christian Happiness

The first message Jonathan Edwards preached was titled, “Christian Happiness.”  He was but a teenager, yet his spiritual wisdom was profound.  Contemplate the three points of the message…

Point 1: Our Bad Things Turn Out For Good (Romans 8:28)

Point 2: Our Good Things Can Never Be Taken Away From Us (Christ, Salvation, Forgiveness, etc)

Point 3: Our Best Things Are Yet To Come (With God in heaven, rewards, etc)

Amen.

Aside: Kind of flies in the face of the modern health, wealth, and prosperity preaching heard in America today doesn’t it?

No One Has Ever Confessed To…

There are two things I’ve never ever had anyone ask for pastoral guidance about.  One is covetousness and the other is pride. I want to write briefly about the latter.

Jonathan Edwards once wrote that pride is evidenced by four things in a person’s life: 1) Drivenness, 2) Scornfulness, 3) Willfulness, and 4) Self Consciousness.

Drivenness: There is nothing wrong with wanting to well what you do… whatever that is.  There is nothing wrong with doing whatever you do to the best of your ability.  The problem comes in when you take joy over knowing others aren’t as good as you are.  The problem is when you are glad when others fail who do the same thing you do.  The problem is when you use people as tools to advance yourself without regard to how it effects them.

Scornfulness: This is when a person belittles others.  This is when a person cannot rejoice when others succeed.  This is when a person says things to and about others to others so as to impugn their character.  This is when a person is quick to throw a look of disdain or contempt toward others when they believe that person is “gaining on them.”  This person loves finding fault in others.

Willfulness. This is when a person is “always right.”  The individual quickly discounts the ideas and thoughts of others as inferior.  This is when a person forces their will on others without regard for the fallout.  This is when a person relies on the force of their personality to overwhelm others and get their way.

Self-Consciousness. This one works two, seemingly contradictory, ways.  The first is a person who has an exceedingly high view of themselves.  The other is a person who is consumed with an exceedingly low view of themselves.  This is when a person constantly wonders and worries about what others think of them.  Either way, the person is unhealthily focused only on themselves.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve got some heart and attitude work to do!

“Preacher… You’re Fired!”

Truth is… churches fire preachers.  Some deserve it, some don’t.  Truth is… preachers leave church too late, and before they should.  Consider one pastor who was fired by the church he served… after 23 years… by a 230 to 23 vote (90% against him).  I’ll explain why he was fired later…

Jonathan Edwards was probably the greatest mind God ever produced in America.  Most know him as the writer of “Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God” which is stunning in it’s description of God’s wrath (Click here to download a free MP3 of the message.  I encourage you to listen to this message.  Reading it isn’t the same as hearing it read.).

He is still widely read and quoted centuries after his death (How many of us will be able to say that?).  In 1920 a study was done about his descendants which produced this amazing record…

In the year 1900, there were 1,394, of whom 1,295 were college graduates; 13 presidents of our greatest colleges; 65 professors in colleges, besides many principals of other important educational institutions; 60 physicians… 100 and more clergymen, missionaries, or theological professors; 75 were officers in the army and navy; 60 prominent authors and writers… 33 American States and several foreign countries have profited by the beneficent influences of their eminent activity; 100 and more were lawyers… 30 were judges; 80 held public office, of whom one was vice-president of the United States; 3 were United States senators; several were governors, members of Congress, framers of State constitutions, mayors of cities, and ministers to foreign courts… (Popenoe and Johnson, New York, 1920, pp. 161-62).

So what could bring a church to fire a man of the Biblical and intellectual strength of Jonathan Edwards?  George Marsden wrote about the termination in his biography of Edwards…

The scene of America’s greatest theologian and colonial America’s most powerful thinker being run out of town and forced into exile in a frontier village has intrigued observers ever since. Is it the tragedy of the great man being crushed by following his own high principles? Or is it the pathos of a brilliant but impractical intellectual whose prudery and zeal for control brought out the latent pettiness of a small town? As in most of real life that rises beyond the ordinary, it was a mixture of both the exalted and the pathetic. (p. 369)

Edwards went on trial before a ministerial council which asked the congregation to vote their opinion. It was ten to one against: 230 men voted against him, and only 23 voted for him. The council’s investigation cleared Edwards of several charges against him, and affirmed that he was a fine pastor who could continue to serve in another congregation which shared his views of church membership.

But what was the issue that brought about such heated ire?  It boils down to Jonathan Edwards believing that only Christians should partake in the Lord’s Supper. Imagine doctrine being the cause of firing a pastor!  It is rare a pastor is terminated for doctrinal disagreement today.

Edwards’ farewell sermon was a sober reminder that this pastor and this congregation were standing in the presence of God, and would have another trial eventually:

With the intensity and unrelenting logic to which they were so accustomed, he depicted a compelling scene of how they would meet again before the great throne of God on the judgment day. At that meeting they would have to give an accounting of how they had treated each other as spiritual father and children, these twenty-three years. (Marsden, p. 361)