Seeking After Christ, Part 2

Tuesdays with Edwards!

Two hundred seventy four years ago this month, Jonathan Edwards preached a sermon on the wise men following the star to find Jesus in Bethlehem focusing on Matthew 2:10. If you missed it, the first part of this sermon is posted here.

In the second section of this sermon, Edwards asserts that the main point or doctrine that Matthew 2:10 teaches is that “when those that have been earnestly seeking Christ come to find him, [they] have reason to rejoice with exceeding great joy.” He unpacks this by giving five reasons why this is so:

1. That Christ is the most “excellent and lovely” person that there is.
2. That when you find Him, you find Him ready and willing to receive you.
3. That His deliverance is total and complete.
4. That His grace is unassailable, so His deliverance is assured.
5. That His grace never stops giving and supplying for all our need and happiness.

I will post the third and final part next Tuesday, December 23. You can find the sermon, Seeking After Christ, on the Jonathan Edwards Center website at www.edwards.yale.edu and in Sermons and Discourses, 1739-1742, ed. Harry S. Stout, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 22 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003). Today’s post can be found on pages 289-292 in that volume.

***

Doctrine.

When those that have been earnestly seeking Christ come to find him, [they] have reason to rejoice with exceeding great joy.

The following reasons may be given of the doctrine.

I.  The person that they find is exceeding excellent and lovely. Before Christ is found, there is nothing that is truly lovely that is ever found or seen. Those things that they had been conversant with before and had set their hearts upon, had no true excellency. They only deceived ’em with a false, empty show. But now they have found Christ, they have found one that is excellent indeed. They see in him a real and substantial excellency.

Before that, while they were under trouble, they had before them only those things that were objects of fear and terror, such as their own guilt, the wickedness of their hearts, and the wrath of God, and death and hell, but nothing pleasant or lovely. But [when] they came to find Christ, what was terrible in those objects disappears, and they found a glorious object and far surpassing all things that ever they saw, one of excellent majesty and of perfect purity and brightness, purer than the light of the sun, infinitely farther from all deformity or defilement than the highest heavens themselves; and this conjoined with the sweetest grace, one that clothes himself with mildness and meekness and love. How refreshing and rejoicing must this be after they have nothing before their eyes but their sins staring them in the face, appearing with a frightful countenance, and God’s terrible anger, and frightful devils, and death’s pale and ghastly countenance, and the devouring flames of hell. How exceeding refreshing must it be to find so lovely an object after they have so long had nothing but such objects before ’em.

It was doubtless the more refreshing and joyful to the wise men to see Christ’s star arise because, till then, they had been travailing in a great wilderness; for there, a vast, dry, desolate, howling wilderness lay to the east of Judea, through which they travailed in seeking Christ, where they found no pleasant objects, nothing but dry sands and barren rocks, and pits and drought, and serpents and wild beasts. But now they have a pleasant object, a bright star arising.

So sinners that seek Christ, they seek him in a wilderness. They have a wilderness to travail through before they can find him. But what exceeding great joy does it cause to behold so glorious an object after travailing in such a dreadful desert. How joyful may it well [be], after travailing in a night of gross darkness, beholding no pleasant object, having nothing but darkness, to behold so bright a star with such pleasant, refreshing light enlightening and smiling upon them.

They that find Christ, find him who is the chiefest of ten thousand, altogether lovely [Canticles 5:10]. They find one with a loveliness altogether new, such as they never saw anything like it before. They find a pearl of great price, a jewel that is exceeding precious. The brightness with which it sparkles is precious and sweet. The brightness of the sun is but darkness to it, and therefore it fills the soul with exceeding gladness.

II. They find Christ exceeding ready to receive them. Though he be so glorious and excellent a person, yet they find him ready to receive such poor, worthless, hateful creatures as they are, which was unexpected to ’em. They are surprised with it. They did [not] imagine that Christ was such a kind of person, a person of such grace. They heard he was an holy Savior and hated sin, and they did not imagine he would be so ready to receive such vile, wicked creatures as they. They thought he surely would never be willing to accept such provoking sinners, such guilty wretches, those that had such abominable hearts. But behold, he is not a whit the more backward to receive ’em for that. They unexpectedly find him with open arms to embrace them, ready forever to forget all their sins as though they had never been. They find that he as it were runs to meet them, and makes ’em most welcome, and admits ’em not only to be his servants but his friends [Luke 15:11-24]. He lifts ’em out of the dust and sets ’em on his throne; he makes them the children of God; he speaks peace to them; he cheers and refreshes their hearts; he admits ’em unto strict union with himself, and gives the most joyful entertainment, and binds himself to them to be their friend forever. So are they surprised with their entertainment. They never imagined to find Christ a person of such kind of love and grace as this. ‘Tis beyond all imagination or conception.

III. They that find Christ find that deliverance that is exceeding great. They were before the children of wrath; but now, behold, they are delivered from that wrath and God is become their friend. Before they were in the possession of Satan, a dreadful adversary; but now they have found deliverance out of his hands. Christ has rescued ’em. He has conquered the strong man armed [Luke 11:21]. He has forever set ’em out of the devil’s reach as to any power to destroy them.

Before they were terribly afraid of death; but now they have deliverance from all hurt that death can do ’em. They have no need now to be at all afraid of death. They may now in Christ set their hearts at rest about it. Hebrews 2:15, [Christ came] to deliver those “who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.”

Before they were in a terror about the day of judgment; but now they are delivered. They need not fear to hear the last trumpet at any time. When that day comes that the earth shall be removed and the mountains {shall be moved out of their places}, they need not fear.

They were before, every day and night, in danger of devouring fire and everlasting burnings; but now they have found safety. They before were in an horrible pit; but now they are delivered. They have found a rock on which to set their feet. Before they were in dreadful captivity; but now they are brought out of it. Their chains are knocked off. The prison doors are set open and they are set free from their taskmasters.

IV. They that find Christ find a defense that is exceeding strong. As they are delivered, so they may be sure that they shall be forever safe. Their enemies that before held ’em in captivity was vastly too strong for them. They were in their hands as infants in the hands of giants, but now they have found a Savior infinitely stronger than they. They have found a strong rock and an high tower where they may dwell on high.

Christ is between them and their enemies like a great, steep, rocky, impassable mountain, like that mountain that divided between Saul and David when Saul sought David’s life, of which we read, 1 Samuel 23:26, “And Saul went on this side of the mountain, and David and his men on that side of the mountain.” And ’tis said, v. 1 Samuel 23:28, “therefore they called the place Selah Hammahlekoth,” which signifies “the Rock of Divisions,” because it was the mountain or rock that divided between David and his enemies.

It seems that that mountain was a very steep, high, and rocky mountain, so that it was impassable, so that it divided between David and Saul and was a defense to David, so that Saul could not come at him to hurt him, though he must [have been] just by him. But Christ is the true Selah Hammahlekoth, like a great and high mountain of rock to be a wall of division between them and their enemies. Their enemies can as soon penetrate a rocky mountain as they can hurt those that have found Christ.

V. They that have found Christ have a fountain that is exceeding full, full of that which they stand in need of for the supply of the wants, and satisfying the cravings of their souls; a fountain of that happiness that is true happiness, that which is exquisitely sweet, a fountain of living waters from whence rivers are continually flowing. They that find him find rivers of waters in a dry place.

Here they find an inexhaustible treasure. Here they find balm to heal the wounds of their souls, excellent food, “fat things full of marrow, and wines on the lees well refined” [Isaiah 25:6]. Here they find that fruit that is sweet to the taste. Here they find gold tried in the fire. Here is white raiment to clothe them. Here are crowns of glory.

Here they have enough, enough to live upon as long as they live in this world, and to all eternity. Here is enough; they can desire no more. The fountain is inexhaustible and never can be diminished. And has not a poor, ragged, naked beggar, a wretched outcast, a wandering, famishing, lost creature, cause of exceeding great joy when, after it has long wandered in the wilderness, it finds such a fountain?