Jonathan Edwards preached passionately and relentlessly that cultivating worship and godliness in the home was a crucial means of grace. But he did much more than talk about it—he lived it and built his own home on it. In this session, Jason Dohm will delve into Edwards’ homelife, showing how he and his wife Sarah nurtured a marriage that modeled the gospel.

The title of my message this morning is Manhood and Womanhood in Jonathan Edwards' home. It was really Jonathan and Sarah Edwards' home. You'll be hearing as much or more about Sarah Edwards as you will about Jonathan Edwards. You're familiar with Hebrews chapter 11. It's known as the Hall of Faith, this listing of people who lived by faith in God, often during tumultuous times and God sustained them and they found God willing and able to make them flourish even in times of tremendous turmoil.

And then we read this at the very beginning of Hebrews 12, relates those people who lived by faith in God to us, saying, therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily ensnares us and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us." So many have gone before us and they ran with endurance the race that was set before them, and the author of Hebrews is saying, now it's our turn. So isn't it a comfort to know that there are generations of believers who have walked closely with the Lord and wrestled with the things that we wrestle with whose shoulders we can stand on as we try to make progress. In other words, we can start further along than they started because of the contributions that they made. So it's really the hope for this talk is that we evaluate how they walked with God and worked out manhood and womanhood and their lives and their home and so we can have a starting point as we wrestle with the same things that is further advanced.

We can start further ahead and maybe go further just by standing on their shoulders. Many of that great cloud of witnesses that have gone before us are captured in Scripture and you can't do better than Scripture. But many are also found in church history and they can help us too. So why should we care about manhood and womanhood in the home of Jonathan and Sarah Edwards because they were trying to create these things. Not just out of their culture, we can easily idealize the Puritan culture and think everyone in Puritan culture knew about manhood and knew how to be a man.

That's actually not true. So many of the things that Jonathan and Sarah were doing in the realm of manhood and womanhood were not cultural. They actually were countercultural in ways that we'll talk about today. So don't don't idealize that age. They had a fist full of challenges like we do and they weren't trying to create manhood and womanhood just receiving it from a culture that got it, that's not true, or out of their own thoughts, that's not true.

They were trying to have their manhood and womanhood shaped by Scripture. They were walking closely with the Lord while they wrestle with these things and so as we wrestle with the same things in a different culture and in a different century they can help us so that's the hope for the time. Let's ask for God's help. God would you help us? We pray that with such confidence knowing you have this overwhelming disposition to do us good.

Thank you for that. We can pray those words help us God with such confidence knowing that you want to, knowing that it is your delight to set your spirit free to work in the hearts of your people to do us good to strengthen us to encourage us to rebuke us in some ways but to to come and be among your people and strengthen us. May it be so in Jesus' name. Amen. Okay, heading number one, Jonathan Edwards as a biblically masculine man.

If you read the biography, study the history, you find Jonathan Edwards as a biblically masculine man. Not a macho man, but a biblically masculine man. The first thing I should say is this, Jonathan Edwards' masculinity came out of his relationship with the Lord. He had a deep, sweet, abiding relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, and that was the roots of his masculinity. That meant that his view of what it meant to be a man was shaped by scripture.

Jesus was his King, his friend, his Lord, and that meant that he knew that he had been spoken to and that's what the Bible is, is the king speaking to his subjects and a father speaking to his children and a Lord speaking to those who are following him and so he went to the Bible to have his identity shaped, his identity as a man shaped. Anyone who has ever read Jonathan Edwards' 70 resolutions, Have you done that? They're actually very amazing. I'm not going to spend any time other than to reference. He had these amazing 70 resolutions.

So if you want homework, your homework can be Google, Jonathan, Edward resolutions. Just read through them. They're in categories. But as you read those resolutions, it becomes so clear that those were much more than just a religious framework. You know, you can make resolutions that aren't much more than that, but when you read those resolutions you can see that there's a heartbeat in these resolutions, that they were centered around personally walking with God.

You don't write those 70 resolutions of Jonathan Edwards unless you love the person that you're resolving these things over And that comes through in so much of his writings. If you've ever read Jonathan Edwards, you know that there is a heartbeat there in those writings. Listen to these two excerpts from his writings. They're not part of the resolutions, but they're things that he wrote. The first one is, he wrote when he was about, he was approximately 18 years old.

So imagine an 18 year old writing what I'm getting ready to read to you. On January 12th, 1722, So he was born in 1703, right at the beginning of the 1700s, so he's 18 now. On January 12, 1722, I made a solemn dedication of myself to God and wrote it down, giving up myself and all that I had to God to be for the future in no respect my own, to act as one that had no right to himself in any respect." So if you don't if you don't find a pulse and a heartbeat there, like zone in, pay attention, it's there. Later, years later, he wrote this, I felt with all and ardency of soul to be what I know not otherwise how to express then to be emptied and annihilated, to lie in the dust and to be full of Christ. Jonathan Edwards wanted the death of himself he wanted to be emptied and annihilated so that he might be full of Christ and to be perfectly sanctified and made pure with a divine and heavenly purity.

So the first point I wanted to make is that we should see all these things that I'll talk about as flowing out of his discipleship as a follower of Jesus. In other words, I'm going to talk about manhood in his life. Where did these things come from? They came from him walking with Jesus, from him following Jesus. Yes, he was a great theologian, that's what we know him as, as the great American theologian.

But even that was rooted in something much more fundamental. You know, there are a lot of theologians out there who have very dry theology, and it doesn't seem to have warmed their hearts, and it doesn't seem to have ended in doxology or praise to the Lord. That is not Jonathan Edwards in any way. His great theology was rooted in him actually knowing the living God and walking with him. So we can isolate one aspect of his life, manhood, biblical masculinity, but the danger in just looking at that in isolation is that you lose the sight of the fact that that was just one expression of him walking with Jesus and desiring for his life to be shaped by Scripture.

So that's what's happening as we look at these things in his life. He's wanting to walk with Jesus and have his life shaped by Scripture. Now let's consider Jonathan Edwards as a husband. Jonathan was 24 when he married Sarah Pierrepont, or Pierpont, I've heard it pronounced both ways and I'm actually not sure which is right. I'm going to from here henceforth say Pierre Aponte and forgive me if I have it wrong.

She was 17. He was 24 and she was 17. They had had an extended courtship leading up to that. They married when he was 24 and she was 17. Everyone noticed how improved he was by being married.

What's happened to this guy? He's happier, he smiles more, he's more light-hearted. You find this in all the biographies that all of his friends noticed this change that came over Jonathan when he married Sarah Pierrepont and a lot of us in the room would say that happened to me. People noticed to me I was a lot more light-hearted, I was a lot happier. I sang a lot more when I got married, this was true of Jonathan.

Elizabeth Dodds, who wrote a book on their marriage and home life, wrote this. More than anyone on the outside guest, Sarah leaned on him. Though she carried all the practical details of managing the house, Sarah depended on Jonathan for her own spiritual replenishment. She would dart into a study during the day confident that no matter how intent he was on his writing he would put down his pen and turn to her with lighted face. She fed on his leadership of family prayers and on the quiet time she and Edward spent together on devotions after the children were in bed.

The time that put a benediction on all the bustle of the daylight hours. So this was a man who was known to spend 13 hours a day in his study, but he was happy to have visits, especially from his dear wife Sarah, and she counted on that. She counted on his delight in her quote-unquote interruptions during the day to come in just for a word of encouragement or just for small talk or just to talk about something that was happening in the home. And she was fed because their family would meet to worship God, these family devotions, and they would have time together, spiritual time together, devotions together after their children were in bed. So Jonathan was never too busy for her.

She needed his time, she could have his time, and he was daily spending time, spiritual time, with her making sure she was she was nourished spiritually. So in Ephesians chapter 5 when it calls on husbands to wash their wives in the water of the world, in the water of the word, Jonathan Edwards was diligent about that. In Ephesians 5 when it calls on husbands to love and to nourish and to cherish their wives, Jonathan Edwards was diligent about that because he was walking with Jesus and reading his Bible. Fast forward to Jonathan Edwards death when he was 54 years old. They had been married about 30 years.

He was inoculated. They were they were states apart at this point because she was packing up to come and join him in Princeton. And he was inoculated for smallpox, I think early experimental form of vaccination. So if you don't like the modern vaccinations, you wouldn't have liked this. This was the early experimental form of that.

And in his attempt to be inoculated by smallpox he contracted smallpox and died from smallpox. These words were at the very end of his life whispered to one of his daughters, he whispered these words to one of his daughters, give my kindest love to my dear wife and tell her that the uncommon union which has so long subsisted between us, has been of such a nature as I trust is spiritual, and therefore will continue forever." He wanted this message to go, he knew he was dying, he knew he was about to die, he wanted this message to go to his wife. You were dear to me and our union hasn't been a common union, it's been an uncommon one and it's been a spiritual union so I think it will continue. He wanted those words to go to his wife. In his dying hours, he was thinking about her.

She was at the top of his thoughts. So, Jonathan Edwards treasured his marriage to Sarah, And as a biblical husband, as a husband who was having his patterns of life shaped by Scripture as he walked with the Lord, he invested in it daily in the ways that the Bible commands. So you can go to husband passages in the Bible, see what the Bible is directing husbands to, and you can actually find these things in the record of his marriage to Sarah. So we've seen Jonathan Edwards as a disciple, he had this deep, sweet, vibrant relationship with the Lord Jesus walking with him. We've seen him as a husband, treasuring his marriage to Sarah.

Finally, let's consider Jonathan Edwards as a father. The Lord gave Jonathan and Sarah 11 children. They all lived to adulthood, which in early to mid 1700s was very unusual if you had 11 children. It was almost never true that all of them would live to adulthood, but they did in the home of Jonathan and Sarah Edwards. And Jonathan was a devoted father who you could find doing the things the Bible tells fathers to do.

So again, you go to the fatherhood passages in the Bible, you see what God tells fathers to do, and you go to the record and you find Jonathan Edwards doing those things. I've already mentioned so-called family prayers, we might call it, in our home we always call it Bible time, but it was a lot more than just reading the Bible. We were praying and singing sometimes too, but they called them family prayers and those were twice a day every day, morning and evening. So in the mornings he would gather his family and whoever was in the house there were, we'll talk about that as we go, but there were often more people in the house than just family. He would gather them to worship God and then in the evening they would do the same thing again.

When Jonathan Edwards great-grandson Serenaud-Dwight was collecting material to write a book about him. He interviewed a very old man who had known his father and who had spent time in their home, a Dr. Lathrop, who had been in Jonathan and Sarah's home and participated in these family prayer times, in these family devotions. And here's what he said. He said that he had never heard another prayer that brought heaven and earth so near together.

So here's the eyewitness account of an old man being interviewed by his great-grandson, a man who had spent time in their home and been there when they had these family devotions and in his old age his memory was as Jonathan Edwards praying and bringing heaven to earth in his prayers. So this was not form. Their family prayers wasn't just form and checking off another thing on the list. Though they did it regularly, there was life in these things so much so that the eyewitnesses in old age would say, I never heard someone bring heaven down like that in his prayers. And the children were really getting this.

Listen to this funny story from their daughter Esther's journal. So one of their 11 children, actually one of the older children, Esther, had a journal that we get lots of great data on what was happening in this home. This entry was written by Esther in her journal when she was 15 years old about saying grace over breakfast. So here's her recollection. This morning as Mr.

Edwards, often in her journal she calls her dad Mr. Edwards or or our honored father often. It's very sweet. This morning as Mr. Edwards did not come at once my dear mother who always herself says grace when father is absent from home said that Jonathan Edwards Jr.

Who was just past eight years old might officiate." So Mom is taking control, Dad hasn't come on the scene to say grace for breakfast, so Mom is taking control. Normally, she would do it herself, but now she has given their eight-year-old son, Jonathan Edwards Jr., the right to bless the food. This pleased us all. For he fell into Father's exact words and intonations as a child would do without seeming to intend it. Meaning this had been so pressed into this eight-year-old Jonathan Edwards Jr.

That when he was given the responsibility to say grace over the food The reflex was to say the same things in the same intonations and sort of mimic dad Which is funny, but but also revealing it's funny, but it's revealing in the same way He was learning to put his eyes on his father and follow his father as his father followed Jesus and to pray these prayer that another eyewitness says these are the prayers that bring heaven to earth so thought that was a sweet account. In addition Jonathan was very active in the individual personal development of these 11 children. So I just want you to think about that phrase for a minute. Individual personal development of 11 children. And being actively engaged in that and the individual personal discipleship of 11 children and being actively engaged in that.

No small task, but you find him doing that in the record. It was his practice when he went somewhere to take one of his children with him. He had a cushion installed behind his saddle that they could ride on. So this almost always happened. Once in a blue moon, he would go by himself, but his pattern was to plunk a child on the cushion that he had installed on the back of his saddle so that they could ride along and he could talk with them and engage with them in their personal development and their personal discipleship.

His daughter Esther, who kept this journal, mentioned some of those opportunities in her journal. And it's so clear when you read the journal, by the way, let me just commend it to you. It's not big at all. It's 100 pages, but they're little pages with big font. And her journal is just refreshing reading and often funny.

But as you read this journal, you find that these times where it was her turn to ride on the pad on the back of the saddle. These times were very precious to her and she talks about these heart-to-heart conversations that she would have with her with her dad when it was her turn to ride with him to just do the ordinary things that he was doing. Of course a part of their personal development and personal discipleship was his preaching. So he was a dad but he was also a pastor to them. In her journal Esther writes this and this is one of the last entries in her journal.

It was after she was married. She was living in a different state, in a different city, and so these are the reflections of a married adult woman. She says this in her journal, It has been a great refreshment to my soul today to hear again Mr. Edwards, my honored father, from the pulpit. I still think there is none like him.

So now she's all grown up, she's married, she has a family of her own and he comes to town and he's the preacher. She gets to hear him preach and she's finding her soul refreshed by that and thinking and confiding in her journal, I still think he's the best preacher. He was father and pastor, very closely engaged in the personal development of his children, the personal discipleship of his children. He also took an interest in and engaged in their education. Again from Elizabeth Dodd's book on their marriage of family life describing the hour after dinner.

So you're in the Edwards house and Jonathan and Sarah are there presiding. You eat, you're done with dinner, what happens in the hour after, Elizabeth Dodds describes it. Edwards would use this relaxed hour to hear one child's lessons." So he's putting a child on the spot to hear their lessons. He had the idea unusual in those times that girls as well as boys should be educated. The girls, tutored by their father at home, learned Latin, Greek, rhetoric, and penmanship.

Edwards also expected that all the children expected all the children to know Jewish and church history, the chronology of biblical events, and how to correlate passages in the Old and New Testaments. A child never knew when at the dinner table he would be called upon to give a crisp answer to some such question as how long was it after the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar until Babylon was destroyed by Cyrus. I think the answer is 70 years but I wouldn't bet my life on it. Finally, Jonathan Edwards secured honor for Sarah Edwards. So, what was one of the marks of his fatherhood?

Securing honor for mom! That's one of the marks of his fatherhood. Again, from Elizabeth Dodds. Sarah's transactions with her children were reinforced because her husband treated her with total courtesy and serenely expected that each child would follow his example. So he's very careful about how he interacted with Sarah.

What she got from him was total courtesy in their household interactions. It was very clear to all the children that he expected them to follow suit. So he worked hard to secure honor for their mother from them by honoring her in his interactions with her. So that is the manhood of Jonathan Edwards in Ephesians 6 verse 4. The Apostle Paul addresses fathers and he says, you fathers do not provoke your children to wrath but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.

This man devoted himself to that. So you can go to the husband text, you can go to the fatherhood text, and you find Jonathan doing in that home what those texts commend husbands and fathers to do because he was walking with the Lord and his life was being shaped by Scripture. It was informing him as a husband to Sarah and informing him in his role as a father to these 11 children. The record shows that he was a very biblical head of household. Listen to this portion from his farewell sermon.

Why is he preaching a farewell sermon? Because they voted him out. Imagine voting out, 90%. Imagine being voted out If you're Jonathan Edwards, the greatest theologian the United States has produced but voted out by his congregation after about 20 years of pastoral ministry in this church, he was voted out. This was from his final sermon.

We have had great disputes about how the church ought to be regulated and indeed the subject of these disputes was of great importance. But the due regulation of your families is of no less and in some respects of much greater importance. Every Christian family ought to be as it were a little church consecrated to Christ and wholly influenced and governed by his rules. I'm just going to reread that sentence. This might be the key sentence from the hour.

Every Christian family ought to be, as it were, a little church consecrated to Christ and wholly influenced and governed by his rules. And family education and order are some of the chief means of grace. If these fail, all other means are likely to prove ineffectual. If these are duly maintained, all the means of grace will likely be likely to prosper and be successful. Do you hear what he's saying here?

He's saying, well what happens in the home is either a wet blanket to all the other means of grace or it's winds in the sails of all other means of grace. You can undo everything else you're trying to do in the home or you can triple the effect of everything else that you're doing by what's happening in the home. Jonathan Edwards really believed that. Jonathan Edwards really preached that. Jonathan Edwards really lived that and it's wonderful to to view the records.

Heading number two, Sarah Edwards as a biblically feminine woman. Again, we're going to go examine the record. What are we going to find? We're going to find that Jonathan Edwards's wife, Sarah, Sarah Pierra-Pont that he married when she was 17 was a biblically feminine woman. As with Jonathan Edwards, the roots of Sarah Pierre-Apont's womanhood, which was a distinctively biblical womanhood, came out of her close walk with the Lord.

As with Jonathan, so with Sarah. And so it was shaped by scripture. You can believe she knew, you can tell by the record that she knew the the womanhood passages from scripture because you see these things bubbling to the surface as you study their life together. This was written by Jonathan Edwards on the inside of his Greek textbook. Tsk tsk, you're supposed to be studying Greek.

This is what he was writing on the inside of his Greek textbook. He writes this, they say there is a young lady in New Haven who is beloved of that Almighty Being who made and rules the world and that There are certain seasons in which this great being, in some way or other, invisible, comes to her and fills her mind with exceeding sweet delight, and that she hardly cares for anything except to meditate on Him, and that she expects after a while to be received up to where He is, to be raised out of the world and caught up into heaven, being assured that He loves her too well to let her remain at a distance from Him always. There she is to dwell with Him and to be ravished with his love, favor, and delight forever. Therefore, if you present all the world before her with the richest of its treasures, she disregards it and cares not for it and is unmindful of any pain or affliction. She has a strange sweetness in her mind and a sweetness of temper and uncommon purity in her affections.

Is most just and praiseworthy in all her actions and you could not persuade her to do anything thought wrong or sinful if you would give her all the world lest she should offend this great being." It's hard to believe that every word of that is true but just think of this young Greek student writing this in his Greek book about a young lady from New Haven that he's heard about and she was actually known to be very lovely. There's not a word of that in there. What he's heard about her, what he's writing in his Greek book about her is she can't think of anything but this great God in heaven that she knows and that she walks with. He should have been studying in Greek but instead he was writing ditties about a young lady from New Haven that he had heard about. There's probably a lot of textbooks and addicts that have notes like that I'm guessing.

Years later their daughter Esther wrote in her journal when she was 10 years old, so this is another journal entry from Esther, she's ten years old, she's writing, and she's describing how her mother looked when coming from her quote, closet devotion. So she knew where her mom had been, what her mom was doing. She was going behind a closed door to be with the Lord. And she's writing in her journal, this 10 year old girl is writing in her journal about how her mom looks when she comes from that. She has a different look about her when she comes from that.

Isn't that a sweet recollection? Later Jonathan Edwards would write this of Sarah. He wrote, she was daily doing and suffering everything for God. Eating for God and working for God and sleeping for God and bearing pain and trouble for God, and doing all as the service of love, and so doing it with a continual uninterrupted cheerfulness peace and joy. Wouldn't you like to have your spouse write that about you?

That's wonderful. So I'll say it again we can isolate one aspect of her life, womanhood, biblical femininity, but again the danger of that, of isolating that one aspect of her life as you lose sight, that that was just one expression of her walking with Jesus and desiring for a life to be formed and shaped by Scripture. Now let's consider Sarah Edwards as a wife. She loved her husband deeply and she did him a tremendous amount of good. If you study the biographies and the historical records and you're a man you think, oh to have a wife like that, I do have a wife like that, thank you.

In fact she actually inspired a single George Whitefield, so the great preacher, George Whitefield, a single man, actually came to Northampton, stayed in their town, preached in their church, and his stay in their home inspired him to start praying again for a wife. There's a wonderful article from a message given by Noelle Piper on Sarah Edwards that you can find on Desiring God. So if you just go to the Desiring God website and search on Noelle Piper and Sarah Edwards this is really wonderful article will pop up And there she quotes from Whitfield's diary. Listen to what George Whitfield, that great preacher wrote in his diary. Felt wonderful satisfaction at the house of Mr.

Edwards. He is a son himself, meaning a son of God, a believer. He is a son himself and hath also a daughter of Abraham for his wife. A sweeter couple I have not yet seen. Think of how many homes George Whitfield has stayed in in his travels all over the world.

A sweeter couple I have not yet seen. She is a woman adorned with a meek and quiet spirit talking freely and solidly of the things of God, and seemed to be such a helpmeet for her husband that she caused me to renew those prayers which for many months I had put up to God that he would be pleased to send me a daughter of Abraham to be my wife. So he's in this home and he sees this sweet marriage and it makes him think, oh I should restart these prayers that God would send me a wife like this because there's such sweetness for this couple under this roof. Sarah Edwards was a home builder. So we have this phrase in Titus chapter 2, keeper of the home, that older experienced godly Christian women should teach young women to be keepers at home.

The translation's good. I don't have any qualms with the translation. It's rendering the Greek appropriately. But Our minds can invert a keeper at home, invert the word so that we think a keeper at home is a housekeeper. That's not what a keeper at home means.

It's not what the Bible is calling women to be, is housekeepers. That is 5%, maybe less. The Bible is calling women to be home builders, not housekeepers. This is what you find in the record of Sarah Edwards, that she was a home builder. She's building a culture, she's building an economy, She's training and educating and discipling children.

She's helping a husband go further in his endeavor. Sarah built a home for her family that was orderly, that was very productive, and that was relationally wonderful. She wasn't a housekeeper. She was a home builder. Jonathan Edwards is still widely regarded as the greatest theologian and the greatest philosopher the US has ever produced.

You almost find no disagreement on that. Know this, Sarah Edwards secured that for him. Sarah Edwards secured the space for her husband to think. Listen to this quote from Samuel Hopkins who was essentially a pastoral intern that lived under their roof in this home for months and then visited many, many times in the succeeding decades. So he really came to be trained by Jonathan Edwards to be a pastor.

He wrote this from observing their home and he knew a lot about that home. It was a happy circumstance that he could trust everything to the care of Mrs. Edwards with entire safety and with undoubting confidence. She was a most judicious and faithful mistress of a family, habitually industrious, a sound economist managing her household affairs with diligence and discretion. While she uniformly paid a becoming deference to her husband and treated him with entire respect, she spared no pains in conforming to his inclination and rendering everything in the family agreeable and pleasant.

Now listen to this, here's the payoff line. She accounted it her greatest glory and therewith wherein she could best serve God in her generation to be the means of promoting his usefulness and happiness. Friends, the home she built made him happy, helped him labor in happiness, And that was a tremendous advantage to him being useful. And useful he was. Why was he useful?

Because there was a home builder building a home that was perfectly suited to what he needed to be doing, to think and write and prepare to preach. There was a famous story in Northampton that Jonathan Edwards once asked Sarah if it was time for the hay was cut and she responded, it's been in the barn for two weeks. Have you ever heard that quote before? Dear, isn't it time that we cut the hay? He said, it's been in the barn for two weeks.

It said that he had no idea how many cows they had. He didn't even know what the number was. Sounds like the Proverbs 31. Woman, it sounds like a husband whose heart trusts safely in her and she's doing him good all the days of her life so that he could actually be out in the gates contending and a wielding influence for the family while the home was so well managed that he actually didn't need to be there all the time. She kept the household budget which was required to be submitted to the Salary Committee of the church.

He was required to submit a household budget. Guess who submitted it? The person who was controlling it, Sarah. Their home was also known for tremendous hospitality and that was because of Sarah. This was a time that if you were a traveler and the town's inn was full or wasn't reputable you would seek out the pastor's home and you would stay with them.

And of course, Jonathan and Sarah would make use of the opportunities of people staying in their home. In fact, Samuel Hopkins, this pastoral intern, spoke of how at home he was made to feel there in their home and largely because of his conversations with Sarah realized that although he was training for ministry he had never been born again. Okay so he comes to do a pastoral internship essentially in their home he's living there he's having these conversations with Sarah and he realizes because of how she talks about her deep and abiding relationship with the Lord, that although he knows a lot about the Bible, he's never been born again. And he was later saved, and that because they had an open home. In short, Sarah made their home a peaceful refuge where Jonathan could pray and study and write and counsel and prepare to preach sometimes 13 hours a day.

I've mentioned the book by Elizabeth Dodds but I haven't told you the title yet because the title requires explanation. The title is, Marrieds to a Difficult Man. And the reason that it explains, it requires explanation, is that Jonathan Edwards was not a man who was difficult and hard to live with because he had that kind of grating personality. That's not what it's saying. He was a difficult man to be married to because he was uniquely gifted and he had a high calling and it's not easy to be the wife of a man who is uniquely gifted and has a high calling.

Janet knows nothing of this. Sarah Edwards knew everything about that. Finally let's consider Sarah Edwards as a mother. And this is one of her great contributions. There's a famous study, if you've studied the Edwards at all, you've run into this study.

It's actually comparing two family lines, the line of Jonathan and Sarah Edwards and the line of Max Jukes who had descendants who were all scoundrels. But this famous study of the descendants of Jonathan and Sarah Edwards is remarkable for how significant these descendants were through many generations. In other words, if you trace out their family tree, you find these giants. They were Christians, overwhelmingly they were Christians, but they were also pastors and college presidents and senators and, and, and, and. The point is this, the imprint of Sarah Edwards's labors as a mother who poured herself into these children can be seen for many generations into the future.

The sweetness and health and vitality of this home is echoing generation after generation so that if you just study the family line you find that that's true. Let me quote Samuel Hopkins, our pastoral intern again. Samuel Hopkins says this, she had an excellent way of governing her children. She knew how to make them regard and obey her cheerfully without loud angry words, much less heavy blows. If any correlation was, excuse me, if any correction was necessary, she did not administer it in a passion.

When she had occasion to reprove and rebuke, she would do it in a few words without warmth and noise. In her directions and matters of importance, she would address herself to the reason of her children that they might not only know her will, but at the same time be convinced of the reasonableness of it. She had need to speak, but once she was cheerfully obeyed. Murmuring and answering again were not known among them. In their manners, they were uncommonly respectful to their parents.

The kind and general treatment they received from their mother, while she strictly and punctiliously maintained her parental authority seemed naturally to promote a filial respect and affection, and lead them to a mild, tender treatment of each other. Quarling and contention, which too frequently take place among children, were in her family unknown. Find that hard to believe. She carefully observed the first appearance of resentment and ill will in her young children towards any person whatever and did not connive at it but was careful to show her displeasure and suppress it to the utmost. Her system of discipline was begun at a very early age and it was her rule to resist the first as well as every subsequent exhibition of temper or disobedience in the child, wisely reflecting that until a child will obey his parents, he can never be brought to obey God." This is how she viewed her role as a mother, to teach them to respect her, honor her, and obey her so that they would learn in time to respect and honor and obey God.

Samuel Hopkins said, for her children she constantly and earnestly prayed and bore them on her heart before God and that even before they were born. So that is the biblical womanhood of Sarah Edwards, rooted in her close walk with the Lord and having her patterns of life shaped by Scripture, extending to her role as a wife to Jonathan and to her role as mother to their 11 children. In closing, Jonathan and Sarah Edwards are part of that great cloud of witnesses that have gone before us and walked with the Lord as they face some of the same challenges that we face and work to accomplish some of the same things we are striving to accomplish. Don't you thank God for the example of this man. We can stand on his shoulders and of this woman, we can stand on her shoulders.

May God give us the ability to go further than they went. Where their example matches scripture, let's follow them. God, I thank you for a rich record we can benefit from to watch Jonathan be a man whose manhood was shaped by the Bible, Sarah be a woman whose womanhood and femininity was shaped by the Bible. We want to go and do likewise. We want to walk with you, to know you, and to have our lives shaped and formed by this word that you have given us.

We pray in Jesus name, amen.