Edwards’ First Published Sermon

In his first published sermon, Jonathan Edwards emphasized the glory of God in redemption. Today, Stephen Nichols revisits this early message to reflect on our need for dependence on Christ and the grace that secures our salvation.

Welcome back to another episode of 5 Minutes in Church History. On this episode, we are looking at Jonathan Edwards’ first published sermon. He preached this sermon on July 8th, 1731. He was 27 years old, and a month and a week later, it was published in Boston on August 17th, 1731. The two ministers in Boston who were responsible for it getting published, Thomas Prince and William Cooper, wrote a little preface what they called “An Advertisement to the Reader Respecting the First Sermon,” and Thomas Prince ended up being a longtime friend and supporter of Jonathan Edwards. Thomas Prince was born in 1687. He died in 1758, the same year that Jonathan Edwards died and spent most of those years as a minister in Boston. The other was William Cooper. He was born in 1694. He died in 1743, and as we've said another Boston pastor, they write in their advertisement, first sentence, “It was with no small difficulty that the author's youth in modesty were prevailed on to let him appear a preacher in our public lecture and afterwards to give us a copy of his discourse at the desire of diverse ministers and others who heard it.”

Now, let's explain what's going on here. It was very typical in Puritan days that when a minister would get near the end of his career, they would publish one of his sermons, and it was a way to honor a minister. And then these sermons, they'd be printed up usually in Boston and they'd be circulated around New England, et cetera. It was very unusual for a young minister to have a sermon published, and so we find out that Edwards’ youth at 27 years of age and his modesty, his humility were needing to be prevailed upon for him, first of all to give the public lecture and then to have it published. These public lectures were a big deal on Puritan days. They were held on Thursdays in Boston, not every Thursday, occasionally on Thursdays, and ministers would gather not just from Boston, but for many of these, they'd come in from all over Massachusetts or the colony of Connecticut and they would gather in a church, and they were ministers there to be preached to by a fellow minister.

And again, it was a big deal to be chosen to give the public lecture and then to have it published. Well enough about Edwards because the sermon that was published is “God Glorified in the Work of Redemption.” It goes on to say, “By the greatness of man's dependence upon him in the whole of it.” In other words, as we come to this great doctrine of salvation, we have two factors. We have one, that it is entirely the work of God, and therefore he is entirely deserving of the glory. And the other factor is our absolute dependence, our utter need of dependence on him for salvation from start to finish. Edwards chose as his text for this sermon, 1 Corinthians 1:29-31, that “no flesh should glory in his presence, but of him are ye and Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption that according as it is written, ‘he that glorieth let Him glory in the Lord.’”

From this text, Edwards draws this doctrine, “God is glorified in the work of redemption in this, that there appears in it so absolute and universal a dependence of the redeemed on him.” Every part of you as a redeemed person, and all of us as redeemed persons are entirely dependent upon God. Edwards will go on to say that “not only do the Redeemed have all of their good of God and through God, but all of our good consists in him.” The redeemed have all their good in God. He is all our good. It is a wonderful sermon. It is summertime, so I commend it to you as some great summer reading. It is the first published sermon of Jonathan Edwards going all the way back to 1731, and I'm Steve Nichols and thanks for listening to 5 Minutes in Church History.