Sinners in the hands of an angry God
Edwards' most famous sermon
Edwards reads his sermon in a flat, quiet, almost monotonous voice. He does not gesture dramatically. He does not shout. He reads.
Before he has finished, the congregation is in chaos.
People are clinging to the pews and the pillars of the church. People are crying out. Men and women are falling to the floor. The noise becomes so loud that Edwards has to stop and ask for quiet before continuing.
The sermon is Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, preached at Enfield on July 8, 1741. It is the most famous sermon in American history and the most misunderstood.
It is not, primarily, a sermon about hell. It is a sermon about the precariousness of the human condition apart from grace — the thin thread by which every life hangs — and the extraordinary mercy of the God who, despite everything, has not yet let go.
The famous image of the spider held over the flame is in service of one point: the only thing standing between any person and destruction is the mere pleasure of God — and that pleasure is, at this moment, extended. Now is the day of salvation. Now the door is still open. Now the thread is still there.
The terror in the sermon is in service of the mercy. Edwards is not trying to frighten people away from God. He is trying to wake them up to the gift that is still available — and to the fact that it will not always be.
“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 yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling.”
— Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, July 8, 1741 AD
“Vengeance is mine, and recompense, At the time when their foot shall slide: For the day of their calamity is at hand, The things that are to come on them shall make haste.”
Edwards is misread as a preacher of terror. He is a preacher of urgency.
The horror in the sermon is real — he will not soften the condition of the person outside of grace. But the sermon exists because the door is still open. You are reading it. You are alive. The thread is still there.
The urgency is not: be afraid. It is: do not waste the mercy that is still being extended.
Now is the day of salvation. Not because God is angry and you must appease him. Because grace is available and you are not yet dead and the moment to receive it is always now.
What are you waiting for?