Welcome back to another episode of Five Minutes in Church History.

Last week we were talking about Jonathan Edwards and trying to get at his great mountain of teaching by looking at five sayings.

We got through three and we're going to pick up this week.

In between being with you last week and this week, he had his birthday. So before we go any

further, happy birthday, Jonathan Edwards. The third saying I mentioned was

that Christ has flung the door of Mercy Wide open. Again, this is from his sermon,

Sinners in the Hands of an angry God preached at Northampton, but also preached in

a more famous way at Enfield, Connecticut in 1741.

The sermon takes as its text,

Deuteronomy 3235.

Their foot shall slide in due time. That text, dramatic enough, sets the stage for this dramatic

sermon of Edwards. It's often used to paint Edwards to be a gloom and doom, fire and brimstone

preacher and sure enough the sermon talks a lot about God's wrath and the judgment that is sure to come and that sinners cannot escape, except

from Christ.

But here's that wonderful line.

And in one sense, the whole sermon leads up to it, all of this imagery to get at God's anger and his

wrath and his vengeance and it all culminates in this imagery of the mercy of

God and so we picture a grand door don't? This massive door on big hinges and Christ has flung the door of mercy wide open.

And he stands in the doorway and he cries and he calls for us to come.

So that's Edwards Third saying, for his four... and he cries and calls for us to come.

So that's Edwards third saying.

For his fourth saying, we're going to go to another sermon.

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