Selected Sermons of Jonathan EdwardsEdwards, Jonathan
Religion
Selected Sermons of Jonathan Edwards
Edwards, Jonathan
Congregational churches -- Sermons; Edwards, Jonathan, 1703-1758; Sermons, American
With such an heart are their meetings often attended in this world by many
persons, having little regard to him whom they pretend unitedly to adore
in the solemn duties of his public worship, taking little heed to their
own thoughts or frame of their minds, not attending to the business they
are engaged in, or considering the end for which they are come together.
But the meeting at that great day will be very different: there will not
be one careless heart, no sleeping, no wandering of mind from the great
concern of the meeting, no inattentiveness to the business of the day, no
regardlessness of the presence they are in, or of those great things which
they shall hear from Christ at that meeting, or that they formerly heard
from him and of him by their ministers, in their meeting in a state of
trial, or which they shall now hear their ministers declaring concerning
them before their judge.
Having observed these things concerning the manner and circumstances of
this future meeting of ministers and the people that have been under their
care, before the tribunal of Christ at the day of judgment, I now proceed,
II. To observe to what purposes they shall then meet.
1. To give an account, before the great Judge, of their behavior one to
another in the relation they stood in to each other in this world.
Ministers are sent forth by Christ to their people on his business, are
his servants and messengers; and, when they have finished their service,
they must return to their master to give him an account of what they have
done, and of the entertainment they have had in performing their ministry.
Thus we find, in Luke xiv. 16-21, that when the servant who was sent forth
to call the guests to the great supper had done his errand, and finished
his appointed service, he returned to his master, and gave him an account
of what he had done, and of the entertainment he had received. And when
the master, being angry, sent his servant to others, he returns again, and
gives his master an account of his conduct and success. So we read, in
Heb. xiii. 17, of ministers being rulers in the house of God, "that watch
for souls, as those that must give account." And we see by the
forementioned Luke xiv., that ministers must give an account to their
master, not only of their own behavior in the discharge of their office,
but also of their people's reception of them, and of the treatment they
have met with among them.
And therefore, as they will be called to give an account of both, they
shall give an account at the great day of accounts in the presence of
their people; they and their people being both present before their Judge.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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