It’s been some time since I have written about what I’m learning from reading Jonathan Edwards’s earliest sermons.

One of those sermons was, God’s Excellencies, on Psalm 89:6

“For who in the heaven can be compared unto the Lord, and who among the sons of the mighty can be likened unto the Lord?”

Well, the answer, of course, is “Nobody can be compared to our Lord!”

In his introduction to that sermon, Kimnach, using Edwards’s own words, describes it as,

“a sermon in which the subject matter is frequently beyond ‘the outmost verge of our most outstretched thoughts.'” (p. 413)

Kimnach explains that one of Edwards’s favorite sermon themes was “the grandeur of God” (p. 414). No wonder Edwards spoke of going beyond the outer edges “of our most outstretched thoughts”!

This reminded me of the balancing act we attempt every Sunday with respect to expository preaching. If we are really preaching the Bible, not just from the Bible, our task requires finesse. We need to communicate the excellencies of our God, but those excellencies, according to Edwards, often extend beyond “the outmost verge of our most outstretched thoughts.”

Think Advent and incarnation!

One way to think about the effectiveness of our preaching is to assess the degree to which we can clearly present the excellencies of our God and just as clearly state that we haven’t done Him justice.

This gives our listeners the opportunity to worship in two ways. First, they can worship the Lord according to what they have just learned. Second, they can also worship the Lord by acknowledging that what they just learned doesn’t match His greatness.

May our Lord receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus because of this exhilarating, Sunday morning tightrope walk (Ephesians 3:21).

Randal