The sermon by Jason Dohm focuses on the exemplary lives of Jonathan and Sarah Edwards, highlighting their adherence to biblical principles in manhood and womanhood. Jonathan Edwards is portrayed as a biblically masculine man, whose relationship with Jesus Christ and Scripture shaped his life decisions, including his roles as a husband and father. His 70 resolutions and heartfelt dedication to God reflect his deep spiritual commitment. Sarah Edwards, equally devoted, is depicted as a biblically feminine woman who supported her husband's intellectual endeavors while managing their household and raising 11 children to adulthood. Her approach to motherhood, emphasizing early discipline and spiritual guidance, left a lasting impact on their descendants. Together, they created a home that functioned as a 'little church,' deeply influencing their family and community. The sermon encourages listeners to draw inspiration from the Edwards' lives, emulating their commitment to Scripture and their roles within the family.

The message I'm getting ready to preach is a message that I gave yesterday morning. It's about the manhood and womanhood in Jonathan Edwards' home. It's really Jonathan and Sarah Edwards' home. It was certainly her home too. There's just not enough room for that extra name to keep the title a one-line title.

So there you go, Jonathan got it to be his home. In Hebrews 11, you're familiar with it, it's known as the Hall of faith. And it's a listing of these people who lived on God, most of them in very tumultuous times. And they're people who, because they had their eyes on God, they didn't just survive those times, Their spirits, their souls thrived during really chaotic and difficult times because their souls fed on God. And then, after that, we have chapter 12, and the author of Hebrews says this, just about, he calls them actually a cloud of witnesses.

These people who lived on God in their time says this, Hebrews 12.1, 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. You have a long line of people who lived on God by faith and they knew something about weights that weigh you down. They knew something about sins that ensnare you too. But they kept going, and they believed in God, and they walked with God, and they finished their race. So now the author of Hebrews is calling us to take up that life and to walk with God and to lay down the weights like they did and throw off the sins like they did.

Isn't it a comfort to know that there are generations of believers who have walked closely with God. They've wrestled with the things that we've wrestled with and we can stand on their shoulders to see how they did it, like how they attacked those challenges, how they went about trying to accomplish the things that the scripture gives us to strive after, and so we can stand on their shoulders and go from there. Hopefully we have a starting point because of them that is further along than their starting point. So maybe we can go further than them, not that we're better than them, but that they handed us a good starting point. So many of those are obviously captured in Scripture, and that's the best list.

Nothing can improve on that, but many are also found in church history and they can help us too. So that's why we should care about the manhood and womanhood in the home of Jonathan and Sarah Edwards because they were trying to create these things not just out of their own culture. You can romanticize the Puritan age and think, well, men automatically knew how to be men according to Scripture because they were living in the Puritan Age. Actually, if you think that, you haven't studied the Puritan Age very carefully. They had really the same challenges sort of in different ways, and the things that we find in the life and home of Jonathan and Sarah Edwards in many ways are countercultural to the things that were going on in their town.

And so they weren't creating manhood and womanhood just out of a culture that got it, and so they just sort of absorbed it from Puritan culture, which was great. That's the wrong way to think about it. The right way to think about it is they walked with God. And because they had this deep and abiding and sweet relationship with God through the Lord Jesus Christ, they saw Scripture as the thing that should be shaping their lives, and they let Scripture shape their lives. So the things that we see in the record that are good came out of that.

Walking with Jesus and seeing His Word as the thing that ought to shape their lives. So let's pray, and then we'll consider Jonathan and Sarah Edwards. God we are so thankful of the Bible record of brothers and sisters who went before us and walked with you and were sustained by you during chaotic hard times. Thank you that we can stand on their shoulders. Thank you for brothers and sisters like Jonathan and Sarah Edwards Who did and that we can learn from and I pray that we would learn from them that we would find some things that are easy for us to grab on to and be improved by from studying these histories in Jesus name, amen.

Okay, heading number one, Jonathan Edwards as a biblically masculine man. So we have lots of records, lots of history of Jonathan Edwards. And When you look at who he was, how he conducted himself, especially as a husband and a father, we find a biblically masculine man. You find Biblical manhood. The first thing that I want to say is this.

Jonathan Edwards' masculinity came out of his relationship with the Lord. You know there's never been a man like the Lord Jesus. If you want to know how to be a man, know Jesus. That's the man whose manhood that we need. So, if you want to find the roots of an exemplary manhood in the life of Jonathan Edwards, you look to his relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ and therefore his relationship with Scripture.

He knew that Scripture was God telling us what we need to know and this testimony being what ought to shape every category of our life. Jonathan Edwards knew the Lord as Savior and King, and therefore he knew Scripture as truth that should govern his life. And his view of what it meant to be a man was shaped by that. Anyone who has ever read Jonathan Edwards' 70 resolutions, have you ever read that or at least heard of them? I'm not even going to quote one resolution, but he had these 70 resolutions that he developed very early in his life.

Sometimes when we make resolutions, it's sort of a religious framework. That can be helpful. There's, I guess, nothing wrong with a religious framework, but when you read His, they seem like there's something else altogether. It is bubbling up out of a heart that knows Jesus and loves Jesus and wants to try to be like Jesus. When I read the resolutions, that's what I get.

Not a religious framework, but somebody who loves Jesus and wants to be like that because he's so wonderful. Listen to these two excerpts from Jonathan Edwards' writings. The first one comes from when he was 18 years old. He's going to give the date that he wrote this. It's 1722.

He was born in 1703, right at the beginning of the 1700s. So he's 18 years old and he's writing this. 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." So he's renouncing himself as being his own. I don't own me anymore. He continues, to be for the future in no respect my own, to act as one that had no right to himself in any respect.

So this is the ethos. This is the emotion, the heartbeat of the things that he's writing as an 18 year old. Now that's not just religious framework. If you read that and think that's just a religious framework, I do not know how to help you." Later he wrote this, this was a few years later he wrote this, I felt with all an ardency of soul to be what I know not otherwise how to express than to be emptied and annihilated, to lie in the dust and to be full of Christ, and to be perfectly sanctified and made pure with a divine and heavenly purity." He knew enough about Jonathan Edwards to know it would be good if Jonathan Edwards could be emptied out and annihilated so that I could be full of Christ. That's what I want to be like is to be like Christ.

So the first point I wanted to make is that we should see all the things that I'll talk about as flowing out of his discipleship as a follower of Jesus Christ. Jonathan Edwards walking with Jesus looked like this in the category of manhood. That's how I want to frame this. Yes, he was a great theologian, but even that was rooted in something much more fundamental. You know, there are theologians that are very dry.

There are theologians that are great at the theology, but there's not this heartbeat in the things that they write that just tell you their love for theology is really just love for Jesus worked out in a study of things. So we can isolate one aspect of this man's life, manhood, biblical masculinity, and segregate it out from the rest. But the danger of doing that is you lose sight that this is just one expression of him walking with Jesus and desiring for his life to be shaped by Scripture. So let's not do that. We are going to isolate on biblical masculinity and biblical manhood, but don't let it get separated from what is really behind this, which is walking with Jesus, the ultimate man.

Now let's consider him as a husband. Jonathan Edwards was 24 when he married Sarah Pierrepont. She was 17. That relationship became a courtship, which became a marriage, and that happened over a period of years when they got married. She was 17 and he was 24.

When they got married, everyone noticed how improved he was by being married. What happened to Jonathan? He smiles more. He laughs more. He's not so serious all the time.

He's better to be around. You find a biography that doesn't make that observation, that when he got married, all his friends noticed. This is a new man. That's happened to a lot of us. Elizabeth Dodds, who wrote a book on their marriage and home life wrote this, more than anyone on the outside guessed 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 his 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 he was legendary for spending 13 hours a day in his study.

That doesn't mean he was separate from Sarah for 13 hours. She knew that she was always welcome in his study no matter how long he had been in there, no matter what he was working on, if she came in, he would put down his pen and he would look up and smile and be glad to see her. And if she needed a note of encouragement during the day, his study was the place for her to go. And She knew she could count on him gathering the family to open the Bible and worship God in the morning and at night, and that after the kids went to bed there would be more time that just they could have together, and that it would be spiritual time and spiritual encouragement too. He was never too busy for Sarah and he was committed to initiating and leading spiritually refreshing times for her to help her and encourage her.

So Ephesians 5 calls on husbands to wash their wives in the water of the world. He was a man who was devoted to that. He took that very literally and he implemented that and was diligent about that in his life. In Ephesians 5, it calls on husbands to love and nourish and cherish their wives. And you can go to the record, there's a lot of written record about Jonathan and Sarah Edwards, and that's what you find.

He loved this woman, cherished this woman, nourished this woman. Fast forward to his death when he was 54 years old. He had moved to Princeton to become the president of, I think at the time it was the College of New Jersey. I don't think it had been the log cabin college that became the College of New Jersey that ended up being Princeton, what we know as Princeton. He had gone there.

Sarah was at home packing up the home to move the family from Stockbridge to join him there. And he was inoculated for smallpox. He felt like he should get inoculated for smallpox. So think early experimental form of vaccination. If you don't like the modern vaccinations, you would not have liked this.

And in his desire and attempt to be inoculated from smallpox, he contracted smallpox. That was a risk. And he died from smallpox. These words at the very end of his life were whispered to one of his daughters. Here's what he whispered to one of his daughters on the last day of his life, 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." So he's separated, he's a few states away from his wife, he knows he's dying, He whispers to his daughter what's on his mind.

His dear wife, sending his love to his dear wife, and telling her that he knows they didn't have a common union, they had an uncommon union, and that it was spiritual so it's not over and so that he trusts it will continue. So Sarah was at the top of his thoughts in the very last hours of his life and communicating his love and this uncommon union that they've shared and how he knows it's not at an end. These are the words he wanted to reach her. So, Jonathan Edwards treasured his marriage to Sarah, and as a biblical husband he invested in it daily. Jonathan Edwards invested in his marriage daily in the ways that the Bible commands.

In other words, if you go to the husband text in the Bible and you mine out what's a husband supposed to do and you look at the record you find That's what Jonathan Edwards was doing. So we've considered Jonathan Edwards as a disciple. He was a warm, he was a hot-hearted disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. We've considered him as a husband. He was a devoted husband to Sarah.

Finally, let's consider Jonathan Edwards as a father. The Lord gave Jonathan and Sarah 11 children and they all lived to adulthood. That was all but unheard of in the early to mid 1700s. To have 11 children and have them all live into adulthood was so unusual, but their children did. And Jonathan was a devoted father who you could find doing the things the Bible tells fathers to do.

So again, go to the fatherhood texts. What does the Bible tell us dads we should do? Go to the record. What do you find Jonathan Edwards doing? Those things.

You can tell he was taking his marching orders from Scripture. I've already mentioned so-called Family prayers. In our house we've always called it Bible time. It's known commonly as family worship. In those days they were calling it family prayers.

But we're talking about the same thing using different phrases. In the Edwards home it was twice each day, every day, morning and evening. Gather to worship God in the morning, read the Bible, pray together, speak about spiritual matters together, and the same in the evening. When Jonathan Edwards' great-grandson, Serenodwight, was collecting material to write a book about him, he interviewed a very old man. This is his great-grandson writing a book about him.

He interviewed a very old man, a Dr. Lathrop, who had been in Jonathan and Sarah's home and participated in these family devotions. So he had a first-person eye witness to get information from. And Dr. Lathrop said this, he never heard another prayer that brought heaven and earth so near together.

Dr. Lathrop was in their home and whoever was in their home got to be part of family prayer either in the morning or in the evening, and he was there. And his recollection, decades, many decades later, was, I never heard anybody pray like that. Pray heaven down to earth, like the prayers of Jonathan Edwards at family prayer. Sometimes we think of family worship, sometimes we've rushed into it without much thought and we don't put much heart into it.

This man's recollection wasn't like that. He had memories of participating in these family prayers where Jonathan Edwards was leading a spiritually vigorous, spiritually alive time where he was calling heaven into their family prayer meeting. The children were really getting this, so it impacted their children. Listen to this funny story from their daughter Esther's journal. Esther was one of the older daughters and she has a journal that's now priceless because you get all these first-person testimonies about different things in their homes.

So I'm actually going to quote from it quite a bit here, so brace yourselves for that. From Esther's journal, this entry was written when she was 15 years old about saying grace over breakfast. And it would be the pattern when Jonathan Edwards was out of town that Sarah then would say grace over the meal, but this is a day when she made an exception. This morning as Mr. Edwards, often in her journal she calls her dad Mr.

Edwards or my honored father. So here she's calling him Mr. Edwards. 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 is just past eight years old, might officiate." So she's given the eight-year-old leave to, she's appointed him to say grace over breakfast.

Here's what Esther says, this pleased us all. He fell into father's exact words and intonations as a child would do without seeming to intend it. So it didn't seem to them like eight-year-old Jonathan Edwards Jr. Was play-acting, and yet it was the same words and even the same intonations of their dad. Now who hasn't seen that?

It's a funny story. It's funny to imagine this eight-year-old being just like dad saying the same words using the same tones. But it's also very telling that the eyes of these children were on their father as he was doing things regarding the worship of God and that they were learning to do those things in kind. In addition, Jonathan Edwards was very active in their individual personal develop and in their individual personal discipleship. Now I want you to think about that for a second.

He had 11 children. He had 11 children and he was very active in their individual personal development and in their individual personal discipleship. So if you think you got too many kids to have individual input in those areas of your children's life. You have to take it up with Jonathan Edwards, I guess. How would you do that?

I don't know how you do that. It was his practice when he went somewhere to take one of his children with him. He installed a cushion behind his saddle. So we would go off somewhere, just maybe daily business or maybe on a trip, and he would be on the horse and he had this pad, this cushion installed behind his saddle that one of his children could ride with him and then he would spend the time, their travel time, talking with them about spiritual things and about non-spiritual things. His daughter Esther mentioned some of these opportunities in her journal.

There are multiple entries about trips with dad, riding on the cushion behind the saddle, and it's so clear that these times were very precious to her and that these were heart-to-heart talks. They were, this was not always small talk on these trips. He was talking to her about things that mattered to her and about things he wanted to impress on her. One of which was, I really want you to be like your mother. Learn to be like your mother.

There's so much to develop there. Part of their personal development of course was his preaching. He wasn't just dad, he was also pastor to these 11 children. In her journal, Esther writes this, and this was after she was married. She lived in another state and she had her own household at this point, but her dad, Jonathan Edwards, came into town and this is what she writes 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 she's all grown up. She can like any preacher she wants to preach. She's heard a lot of preachers at that point.

To her, there's still no one like Dad as a preacher. It definitely impacted his preaching, impacted and helped her develop as a person and as a disciple. They also took an interest in and engaged in their education. So the education wasn't all just left to Sarah, although she was educating her children. Again from Elizabeth Dodds' book on their marriage and home life, describing the hour after dinner.

So we get this window of information about dinner being over, but the conversation continuing. Here's the hour after dinner. Edwards would use this relaxed hour to hear one child's 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." So I mean think of this, Jonathan Edwards is teaching his girls, his daughters, Latin, Greek, rhetoric, and penmanship.

Edwards also expected all the children to know Jewish and church history, the chronology of the Bible, 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 question as 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. I'm not sure I'm ready to be at the Edwards table after dinner. Finally, Jonathan Edwards secured honor for Sarah Edwards.

This is one of his marks as a father. He made sure mom got honored. He secured honor for Sarah Edwards, 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 what kind of interactions were they seeing dad with mom? Total courtesy.

Him honoring her in their interactions And they all got the picture. My serene expectation is you will do likewise, and I bet they did. So that is the manhood of Jonathan Edwards. Ephesians chapter 6 verse 4 addresses fathers and you fathers do not provoke your children to wrath but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord. This is actually what you find Jonathan Edwards doing.

You find his manhood rooted in his walking personally and closely with the Lord, having his patterns of life shaped by Scripture and extending to his role as the husband of Sarah and to his role as a father to their 11 children. The record shows that he was a very biblical head of household. Listen to this portion of his farewell sermon. Farewell from where? From his church in Northampton.

Why is he leaving his church in Northampton? Because they voted him out. Imagine being in a church that votes out Jonathan Edwards as pastor after almost 20 years of pastoral ministry. This is part of that farewell sermon. We've 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. 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 be likely to prosper and be successful.

Okay, Jonathan, you can't preach to this church anymore. You got one shot. What do you want to say? Make your family's a little church consecrated to Christ and wholly influenced and governed by his rules. If you do, all the other things that you do are likely to prosper.

If you don't, all the other things you do are likely to fail. That's what he wanted to say in his parting shots. This church in Northampton. That's what he believed. That's what he preached.

When you examine the record, that's how he lived. It's wonderful. Heading number two, Sarah Edwards as a biblically feminine woman. As with Jonathan Edwards, the roots of Sarah Pierrepont's womanhood, which was a distinctively biblical womanhood, came out of her close walk with the Lord, and so it was shaped by Scripture. I'm just saying the same thing that I said about Jonathan, but it's so true of her when you examine the record too.

She was a biblical woman, not because she got it from culture or her own thoughts. You won't find biblical womanhood flourishing in that culture either, but it's flourishing in her because she was walking closely with the Lord and she was conforming different categories of her life to Scripture. This was written by Jonathan Edwards on the inside of his Greek textbook. So he's supposed to be studying Greek. Jonathan Edwards, you're going to be our greatest theologian.

Study Greek! No, I'm writing about a girl I heard about. So this was found on the inside of one of his Greek textbooks. 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 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 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." By the way, She was a reputed beauty. She was known to be a very lovely woman. Not a word of that here.

To Jonathan Edwards, he's heard of a girl who is consumed with thoughts of God, of being near God, of loving God and being loved by God. He should have been studying Greek, but instead he was writing ditties about a young lady that he had heard of in New Haven. He eventually makes her his wife. Years later, their daughter Esther wrote in her journal when she was 10 years old. Here's an entry from a 10-year-old journal writer, their daughter Esther, describing how her mother looked when coming from her closet devotion.

So here's what a 10-year-old girl knows about her mother. She's put herself behind a door to read her Bible and be with God and when she comes out from behind that door she looks different. She's like, she looks a certain way when she comes out of the room from being with God. What kind of an imprint does that make on a ten-year-old little girl? It's wonderful.

She had this deep, sweet relationship with the Lord and is rubbing off. Later, Jonathan Edwards would write of his wife, Sarah, that she was, quote, 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." That's what he thought he was witnessing. All this is a service of love for God and so doing it with a continual uninterrupted cheerfulness, peace, and joy. So I'll say it again, we can isolate one aspect of this woman's life, womanhood, biblical femininity, but understand that that is just one expression of her walking with Jesus and desiring for her life to be shaped by the scriptures.

That's actually what you're seeing in her womanhood. As it's flowing out of, I walk with Jesus and this is His word to me and these texts tell me what a woman ought to be and I want to be that. Now let's consider Sarah Edwards as a wife. She loved her husband deeply. She did him tremendous good for their whole married life.

In fact, She actually inspired a single George Whitefield to start praying again for a wife. So, George Whitefield, who is the most famous preacher in the English-speaking world in the 1700s, There's not a more famous preacher from the 1700s. George Whitfield is it. He's the great evangelist of the 1700s. He comes to Northampton.

He stays with the Edwards and preaches at their church. Then he writes in his journal about it. Felt wonderful satisfaction at the house of Mr. Edwards. He is a son himself.

He's saying he's a son of God too. Like me, He's a son of God too. Like me, he's a son of God too. He is a son himself. And hath also a daughter of Abraham for his wife.

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 helpmate for her husband that she caused me to renew those prayers which for many months I have put up to God that he would be pleased to send me a daughter of Abraham to be my wife." He's saying, I'm remembering again to pray for a daughter of Abraham for me to help me to be my wife. What did that? He encountered the sweetest couple that he had seen. A sweeter couple I have not yet seen.

Here was this woman in this home, the companion and helper of her husband, who was adorned with a meek and quiet spirit and who talked freely and solidly of the things of God." This is no wallflower. You want to talk the things of God, George Whitfield? You have a good conversation partner in Sarah Edwards. Sarah Edwards was a home builder in Titus 2. We find this phrase, keeper of the home, Keeper at home.

That's the King James. Most of us know it most famously by that. It's a good translation, but the problem with it is that our minds easily invert keeper of the home and make it housekeeper. You just switch the order and keeper of the home becomes housekeeper. But that's not what the Bible's talking about.

The housekeeper tidies up and does the dishes, does the laundry, might do a little cooking for you. That might be 5% of what a keeper at home does. A keeper at home is a home builder, not a housekeeper. Those are completely separate things. And Sarah Edwards, what was she?

She was a home builder. She was trying to build a little kingdom of God under their roof. The record says she did it really successfully. So she's having children and training children and bringing children to maturity and educating children and creating a relational atmosphere where everyone can flourish And making a financial entity thrive. Sarah built a home for her family that was orderly, that was very productive, That was relationally wonderful.

There's not a housekeeper you can hire that will do those things. Jonathan Edwards is still widely regarded as the greatest theologian and the greatest philosopher the US has ever produced. United States, that is almost universally accepted as true. The greatest theologian from the United States is Jonathan Edwards. The greatest philosopher from the United States is Jonathan Edwards.

Almost nobody argues with that, even the pagans. Know this. Sarah Edwards created a home for that. Sarah Edwards secured the space for her husband to think. Listen to this quote from Samuel Hopkins, who was essentially a pastoral intern, who lived in the Edwards' home for months and then visited countless times over the decades because a friendship was begun and nurtured during his months living with them as essentially a pastoral intern.

He came for a ministerial training, lived in their home, so he just walked with this great pastor. It's a great way to become a pastor, to learn about being a pastor. Here's his observations of 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." So here's, she's rendering everything in the family agreeable and pleasant. Now here's here's the payoff line. Are you ready? She accounted it, her greatest joy and glory, and there wherein she could best serve God and her generation to be the means of promoting his usefulness and happiness.

She created a home of happiness. That made him useful. There is no Jonathan Edwards without Sarah Edwards. Do you get that? There's no man who can be in a study for 13 hours a day unless he has this wife who's managing the family economy and creating this happy environment for the home and where things are so well tended to that he can go think and become our greatest theologian and philosopher.

That only happens if she creates that home. The home she built made him happy and that was a tremendous advantage to him being useful and useful he was. She counted it her greatest glory and the best way to serve her generation to help him be useful to create a home where he would be most useful. There was a famous story in Northampton that once Jonathan asked Sarah if it was time that the hay was cut and this was her response. It's been in the barn for two weeks.

Sarah, don't you think it's time we cut the hay? Yeah, it's already in the barn. It's been in the barn for two weeks. Sarah don't you think it's time we cut the hay? Yeah it's already in the barn, it's been in the barn for two weeks.

It said that he had no idea how many cows they had. Jonathan, you keep cows? Yeah. How many? Sounds like the Proverbs 31 woman, doesn't it?

A husband whose heart trusts safely in his wife, full confidence in his wife. She has all this latitude and she does him good all the days of his life. She kept the household budget which was required to be submitted to the salary committee at church. So none of you even think it. Don't even think it.

But they had a salary committee that required the household expenses to be submitted. Guess who submitted it? She submitted it because she was running the household economy. 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 inn was either full or not reputable, you would seek out the pastor's home and you would stay with the pastor.

And of course they would make use of the opportunities of having people in their home. In fact, Samuel Hopkins, this pastoral intern who came, they opened up their home, though he would come and live with them and receive ministerial training. He spoke of how at home he was made to feel in their home. And largely because of his conversations with Sarah, not Jonathan, but with Sarah, he realized that although he was training for the ministry, he had never been born again. He came to their home as a man who was training for the ministry, and he wasn't born again, but he didn't know it, but then he's having conversations with this woman who's so obviously spiritually alive, he realizes, I don't have what she has.

There's another conversation with him, it's the conversations with Sarah, and later he was saved. It's really useful to realize that you're not saved that often results in becoming saved That's what happened to him in their home. In short, Sarah made their home a peaceful refuge where Jonathan could pray and study and write and counsel and prepare to preach. We're the beneficiaries of that. We should be thanking Sarah Edwards for creating this place where he could do that, sometimes 13 hours a day.

I mentioned the book by Elizabeth Dodds, but I haven't told you the title yet. I haven't told you the title because it requires some explaining. The title is, Marriage to a Difficult Man. Why does that require an explanation? Because it doesn't mean what you would think it would mean.

You would think it would mean he had a difficult, hard to live with personality. It's not what it sounds like. That's not what it meant. It meant, it means that he was a uniquely gifted man with a high calling. My brain's not going to do what Jonathan Edwards' brain can do.

God gave him unique gifts and a high calling, and it's hard to be the wife of a man who fits that description. But was she ever up for the task? She was probably, it's right to say she was a uniquely gifted woman to be the husband of this uniquely gifted man. And This was a high calling for her to have this husband with a high calling. She was married to a difficult man.

She was uniquely gifted for it. It was a high calling. Finally, let's consider Sarah Edwards as a mother. This is one of her great contributions. There's a legend, you probably heard of it, you might have heard of it.

If you know much about the Edwards, you've heard of this. There was a study of two family lines, Jonathan and Sarah Edwards and their family tree, their descendants, and a man from, I think, New York by the name of Max Jukes, who was a famous swindler and tracing out his family line. And essentially the summary is their family line is terrific people and his family line all ended up in prison. I mean it's not exactly that but it's pretty close. You know a swindler gave birth to a family line of swindlers for sure.

It is remarkable for how significant these descendants of Jonathan and Sarah Edwards were through many generations. So anyway, you can, I'm saying you can trace the impact of this mother through many generations. Not just their children, their grandchildren, not just their grandchildren, their great-grandchildren, their great-great-grandchildren. You can trace the impact of this woman through many generations. So many of them were Christians.

So you find believers, so many believers, But you find pastors, you find college presidents, you find senators, and, and, and, and. The point is the imprint of Sarah Edwards' labors as a mother who poured herself into these children can be seen for many generations into the future. So I just want to look at our mothers and say Keep going keep investing Okay, it's going to mean the world to your children But not just your children to your grandchildren But not just to your grandchildren to your great grandchildren and your great great grandchildren All these things mean things for many generations. The investments that you're making are multi-multi-generational investments. Let me quote Samuel Hopkins, our pastoral intern again.

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 correction was necessary, she did not administer it in a passion. When she had an 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 gentle treatment they received from their mother, while she strictly and punctiliously maintained her parental authority, seemed naturally to promote a filial respect and affection." So you see what he's just saying.

He's saying they had this kind and gentle treatment along with strictness that earned for her this family affection for her even though she was strict. So can you be strict? You can be and they'll they can still love you in your strictness if you're gentle at the same time and loving at the same time. Quareling and contention which too frequently take place among children were in her family unknown. 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 to 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 taught to obey God. This was her framework. Unless I teach them to obey and honor and respect me, They'll never be ready or prepared to obey and respect and honor God." Wow. Ladies, how would you like that to be said of your motherhood? All those things to be the eyewitness account of your motherhood.

Maybe so. 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. He was in their house at times while she was pregnant. She was already praying for the babies in the womb. So that is the biblical womanhood of Sarah Edwards, rooted in her close walk with the Lord, having her patterns of life shaped by scripture, and extending to her role as a wife to Jonathan and as her role as a mother to their 11 children.

In closing, Jonathan and Sarah Edwards are part of a great cloud of witnesses that have gone before us. And they walked with the Lord. They walked closely with the Lord. And they faced some of the same challenges that we face and worked to accomplish some of the same things under their roofs that we are working to accomplish under ours. Thank God for the example of these people.

And stand on their shoulders. We can look at manhood and womanhood as an expression of their walking with the Lord and having their lives shaped by Scripture and it can actually put us ahead because we can emulate them. We can follow them as they followed Christ. That's what Paul said, imitate me as I imitate Christ. We can do that.

Where the example that they left matches Scripture, let's follow them. Let's pray. God, we don't want to idolize figures from church history. We know they weren't exactly like the Lord Jesus. We know that the histories leave out many things.

They would probably blush to hear of themselves so favorably profiled, knowing their own weaknesses and sins. But in any event, we thank you for people who have gone before us and walked with you. And we can observe things in their life that come out of their walking with you that help us. And inspire us, make us want to have these manhood texts and womanhood texts flushed out, filled out, lived out in our own lives. Thank you.

Jonathan and Sarah Edwards and wherever their manhood and womanhood reflect what you desire from us, I pray that you would help us to walk in their footsteps. I pray in Jesus name, Amen.