Tuesday Evening Service 20/1/2026

Jonathan Edwards Biography

Watch the Full Sermon HERE

As I was studying to teach a sermon by Jonathan Edwards I was taken to his life. The sermon was called Christ’s example to ministers. Next time I will share from it, but I was once again so drawn to his life, that I would like to share some of it tonight.

Now let me say, Edwards was not a puritan per se, as he lived a bit later: 1703- 1758. So not a really long life, dying at age 55.

Although not a puritan by name and also not by the era in which he lived, he certainly was in his deep-rooted theology. It has been said, that if Calvin was the greatest theologian, and George Whitfield the greatest evangelist, then Edwards would be the greatest philosopher. But at his very core he was like Whitfield; an evangelist.

It was said of the great awakening that occurred in new England, USA in 1740, that:

Jonathan Edwards put a match to fuse, and Whitfield blew it into flame.

A sermon, for sure, that ignited that spark was Edwards’ most famous sermon ‘Sinners At The Hands Of An Angry God.’

Most who have embarked on writing about Edwards’ work, or a biography, all seem to say the same thing - that it was way harder to do, and took way longer than expected. The reason? The sheer depth and vastness of his life’s work.

Just to say, his great, great grandfather was the first off the Mayflower that arrived from England with the gospel. His grandfather had the same name as his great grandfather, Richard Edwards.

His grandfather was quite an amazing man. He married a woman called Elizabeth Tuttle. Who would be Edwards’ grandmother. However, she was most likely the greatest burden and yet most sanctifying part of Edwards’ grandfather’s life.

Not long after they married she bore a son to another man, but not only that, it was something that happened on numerous occasions throughout their marriage. In the end she was found to be completely insane.

However, one of the legitimate sons was Timothy Edwards, who became the father of Jonathan Edwards. Edwards father watched and was taught so much by his own father’s godliness, and love and grace he had in the worst of trials.

Timothy, Jonathan’s father, said his admiration and love for his father was stirred most greatly by how he simply lived a Christian life in real time. In trials, in turmoil and in pain.

His father’s example made Timothy Edwards have no doubt about faith and also made him very tender hearted.

It was said that no child could have received a better grounding in the Lord and the character of Christ better than what Timothy Edwards gleaned from his father.

Timothy, Jonathan’s father, went to Harvard where he received not one but two degrees. It was during that time that he met his future wife Esther Stoddard, who became Jonathan Edwards’ mother. That name is maybe familiar. Maybe not.

The Edwards family were not wealthy, or well known. However, the Stoddard family was. Her family were known throughout new England as prominent land owners, her father was the great preacher Solomon Stoddart, whose church in Northampton Massachusetts was by far the largest and most influential church in the whole of the colonies. Which means in all of the USA. His preaching was legendary. George Whitfield was deeply influenced by him.

So on one side, Jonathan Edwards had Solomon Stoddard as a grandfather, and on the other Richard Edwards, in whom was a great, humble, godly man.

Edwards’ father, along with his wife, moved to East Windsor, Connecticut, where Timothy became the pastor of a new church.

Within a few years they took that new church to having over fifty extended families. What makes it most remarkable is that the only way to reach East Windsor at that time was by boat, across the Connecticut river.

From that humble church 129 churches sprung up and were planted throughout the colonies of New England. Not fancy buildings, but just simple, covered wooden structures.

But from this, houses of the same simple structure started to get build around the churches, and the communities sprung into life, and by life I mean life centred around the church.

Some of Timothy Edwards’ sermons have been preserved to this day.

One of them reads:

We are not sent into the pulpit to shew our wit and eloquence but to set the conscience of men on fire.

If ever a statement was passed down to a son I think there can be no greater than this, when you view the life and ministry of Jonathan Edwards.

Edwards was born into that culture and environment in 1703. He had four sisters older than him, and then six sisters younger than him. He was the only boy of 11 siblings.

Each sister was over six feet tall. The joke was in the community, that Timothy Edwards ‘had sixty feet of daughters.’

Jonathan Edwards was known to be a gentle, loving man, although maybe not so much in the pulpit. It for sure was a result of not just his desire to imitate Christ, but also being around a mother who was such a godly, feminine example to his sisters.

However, it would be ill-fitting to call Edwards’ mother weak. She was known to be gentle and kind, but her nurturing wasn’t delicate, or passive. After all, she was a Stoddard and had that strength of character which she saw in her preaching father.

Esther Edwards, Jonathan’s mother, lived to 98 years of age, and lived in the same family home in East Windsor, part of that parish all her married life. To live to 98 in the 18th century was rare.

One last thing on Edwards’ mother. It is said it took her a long time to accept her salvation and have real trust in her assurance. Some say that it was a mental depression. However, those who truly knew her explained that she just never wanted, and had deep dread for superficial conversions. We would call that today ‘easy-believeism’.

I think it’s worth saying so, as Edwards, during the great awakening, was criticised by many for shallow, emotional conversions. Which when you think of his mother and father, I think not.

Sinners in the hands of an angry God is not an easy-believiesm sermon, or many others he preached.

Edwards’ father, as he was growing u,p was conscripted to the Queen Anne War. The war between the British and France over areas of Canada; Quebec in particular.

He was conscripted as a Chaplin. Some of his letters home are so touching. I will read one, which was written after a 160 mile march in August 1711:

I have still strong hopes of seeing thee and our dear children again. I cannot but hope that I have had the gracious presence of God with me since I left home, encouraging and strengthening my soul, as well as preserving my life. I have been much cheered and refreshed respecting this great undertaking, in which I verily expect to proceed and that, I shall before many weeks are at the end, see Canada. But I trust in the Lord that He will have mercy on me and thee, my dear, and all our dear children, and that God has more work for me to do in the place where I have dwelt with you for many years, and that you and I shall yet live together on this earth for many years, as well as to dwell together in heaven with the Lord Jesus Christ and all His saints, with Whom to be is best of all. Remember my love to each of the children; to Esther, Elizabeth, Anne, Mary, Jonathan, Eunice, Abigail. The Lord have mercy and internally saved them all with our dear little Jerusha. The Lord bind up their souls with thine and mine in that bundle of wonderful life.

The Edwards family were not rich, they received no salary, but were given an amount to live on, and then they were provided with the food from the congregation who worked in farms etc. Also, Jonathan’s mother distilled applejack cider and sold it. Yet they were a very generous family.

However, what extra they did have, went to Jonathan’s education. Much done by his father. Edwards was fluent in Greek and Latin. Not only in the reading of it, but writing. His father instilled the importance of writing. And of course, any familiar with Edwards will see that.

For me, his sermons are among the greatest I’ve ever read. To the point I’ve stood up in my office many times I’ve been that excited and touched by them.

As the population arose, towns rose, and so did churches. Churches that were all congregational churches. Now as times changes, so did those who came to church. All went, but not all were there for the right reason, more habit; tradition.

Also, the governance of church needed shook up. Unlearned men had now found their way to the pulpit. Something needed to change.

The fire wasn’t going out everywhere, but in many churches it had become more dull; only reading of scripture, relaxed discipline, even in some: no communion. It was clear something needed to change.

Hence church governance entered in. Not all for good, but Edwards’ father wasn’t against any accountability, and rightly so. Although his pulpit preaching never changed.

Edwards entered college: Collegiate school in Connecticut (which would become Yale).

Was he smart enough for Harvard, yes he was. However, Harvard had started to shift from sound puritan teaching, and was no longer the beacon of truth it once was. So his father chose this smaller, more sound school, but yet not fully endorsed. However, they had a brilliant Harvard teacher who came to teach at the new college.

As time passed, Edwards in his studies and moving college, eventually to what became Yale, had become a young man who lost sight of God, in pursuit of new ideas, and ways of seeing God and religion. He in effect lost his way ‘the one thing needed’ as Iain Murray writes, ‘was still absent’. And that was salvation.

However, that changed. Edwards, in a letter full of joy, written to his parents in 1721, stated: ‘a new sense of divine things, an inward sweet delight’.

Let me read a part of a letter to his parents:

The first instant that I remember of that sort of inward sweet delight in God and divine things that I have lived much in since I was reading those words from 1 Timothy 1:7 ‘Now unto the king, eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.’ As I read those words, there came into my soul, and was as if it were diffused through it, a sense of glory of the divine being, a new sense, quite different from anything I've ever experienced or ever witnessed. Never any words of scripture seemed to mean so much as they did at that moment. I thought to myself, how excellent a being that was, and how happy I should be if I might enjoy that God and be wrapped up in Him in heaven, and be as it were swallowed up in Him forever. I kept saying, as it were, singing over these words of scripture to myself, and went to pray to God that I might enjoy Him and prayed in a manner quite different from what I used to do, and with a new sort of affection that I've never experienced before. But it never came into my thought that there was anything spiritual, or even thought of a saving nature. From about that time I began to have a new kind of apprehension and ideas of Christ and the work of redemption and the glorious ways of salvation in Him. An inward sweet sense of these things at times came into my heart once and for all. And my soul was led away into the pleasant views of contemplation of Him. And my mind was great greatly engaged to spend my time in reading and meditating on Christ, on His beauty and His excellency of His person and the lovely way of salvation by free grace in Him alone. I found no book so delightful to me as those that treated of these subjects. These words used to be abundantly with me: ‘I am the Rose of Chiron and the Lily of the Valley’. The words seem to me sweetly to represent the loveliness and beauty of Jesus Christ alone. The whole book used to be pleasant to me, and I used it so much in reading it about that time, and found from time to time an inward sweetness that would carry me away in my contemplations. The sense I had of divine things would suddenly kindle me. A sweet burning in my heart, an ardour of the soul, that I even know not how to express.

That was the beginning of a whole new life for Edwards. That expressing, is what Edwards went on to master, and preach from. It led him to teach at Yale. And then led him to preach the sermon which ignited the great awakening.

I will conclude with a snippet of his sermon ‘Sinners in The Hands Of An Angry God’.

So that, thus it is that natural men are held in the hand of God, over the pit of hell; they have deserved the fiery pit, and are already sentenced to it; and God is dreadfully provoked, his anger is as great towards them as to those that are actually suffering the executions of the fierceness of his wrath in hell, and they have done nothing in the least to appease or abate that anger, neither is God in the least bound by any promise to hold them up one moment; the devil is waiting for them, hell is gaping for them, the flames gather and flash about them, and would fain lay hold on them, and swallow them up; the fire pent up in their own hearts is struggling to break out: and they have no interest in any Mediator, there are no means within reach that can be any security to them. In short, they have no refuge, nothing to take hold of, all that preserves them every moment is the mere arbitrary will, and uncovenanted, unobliged forbearance of an incensed God.

And he concludes with this as will I tonight:

Therefore let every one that is out of CHRIST, now awake and fly from the Wrath to come. The Wrath of almighty GOD is now undoubtedly hanging over a great Part of this Congregation: Let every one fly out of Sodom: Haste and escape for your Lives, look not behind you, escape to the Mountain, lest you be consumed. Amen

Amen.