Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

It is mine to avenge; I will repay.
    In due time their foot will slip;
their day of disaster is near
    and their doom rushes upon them.”

• Deuteronomy 32:35

Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.

• 1 Timothy 1:17

“At age seventeen, while working on his master’s degree, he began meditating on 1 Timothy 1:17: ‘Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, to God who alone is wise, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.’ That verse sparked a spiritual experience that made Edwards feel ‘swallowed up” in God. Scholars describe this as his conversion experience. Edwards wrote: ‘From about that time, I began to have a new kind of apprehensions and ideas of Christ, and the work of redemption, and the glorious way of salvation by Him.’ …
“… Edwards prepared a sermon titled ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,’ based on Deuteronomy 32:35. This passage is part of the song of Moses, composed near the end of Moses’s life, in which he predicted blessings for Israel and judgment on those who rejected God. Using poetic language, Moses warned the Israelites against drifting from the ways of the Lord, for such backsliders will discover their foot will slip in due time, and the day of calamity will come swiftly.
“Many of Edwards’ sermons were uplifting, positive, and full of the grace and love of God. But on this occasion, his sermon was a warning against taking God for granted or rejecting His entreaties. In a calm tone he warned his listeners:

“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. The arrows of death fly unseen at noon-day; the sharpest sight cannot discern them. …
“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 a 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 any thing to take hold of; there is nothing between you and hell but the air….
“Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell than a spider’s web would have to stop a falling rock. … 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.

“In the pews, Edwards’s words stuck with supernatural force. People began to moan, to weep audibly, and even to scream. The ensuing revival became part of the Great Awakening-a movement of the Holy Spirit over New England and the Colonies.
“The Great Awakening in the American Colonies was part of a much broader revival that swept over the Western church in those days. In England the revival is commonly known as the Wesley Revival; in Germany it became known as Pietism. These three great revival movements changed history, awakening the church in Germany, saving England from going down the path of the French Revolution, and giving America the moral and spiritual impetus to become a free and independent nation.”

• Robert J. Morgan, 100 Bible Verses That Made America

In my recent trip to visit the grandchildren, the oldest of them went with me to Nashville, to sell used books and games.  One of the books that I purchased in return was 100 Bible Verses That Made America by Robert J. Morgan.  As we approach the 250^th anniversary of the birth of the USA, I thought I would do a condensed mini-series on some of these verses, four posts per week for a few weeks – maybe not all 100 verses.

Jonathan Edwards had heard a sermon by George Whitefield.  He was so stirred by this sermon that he wrote the sermon mentioned above.  He normally had sermons on God’s Love and Grace.  But this sermon sparked a revival, The Great Awakening.

I often hear advertisements for a documentary of the Asbury Revival.  They mention that the message was nothing special.  One witness said that she could not remember half of what was said.

But then when the Holy Spirit uses groanings that we cannot understand to communicate with God the Father on our behalf, could it not be that the Holy Spirit communicates with us in a similar fashion when He awakens our spirit?

If you have ever been in a room when the Holy Spirit was at work, the entire room has a pulse.  You do not have to hear words.  You just start crying, screaming, all those things that the people in the pews did when they heard Jonathan Edwards’ sermon.

But the Holy Spirit using Jonathan Edwards was not haphazard.  Edwards began his degree program at Yale when only thirteen years old.  When he began preaching he would spend 13-15 hours in prayer, sometimes facedown in the woods, humbling himself before God, all before he began writing his sermons.

He was not a great orator.  He did something we are taught not to do.  He read his sermons.

So, God did not choose the greatest.  He chose a man of prayer.  Only through a lot of prayer, earnest prayer, can we get revival in the Church today.

But beyond the prayer, Edwards was an intelligent, but simple pastor.  He read his sermons.  In reading, you make no eye contact with the audience.

Yet, the Holy Spirit chose him to spark the Great Awakening.  Truly, when there is a revival, it is God that revives us, not a slick pastor with a fancy message.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.