The Spiritual Blessings of the Gospel Represented by a Feast by Reason of the Abundance and Variety of It.

Tuesdays with Edwards!

Sometime between August 1728 and February 1729 Edwards preached The Spiritual Blessings of the Gospel Represented by a Feast based on Luke 14:16 Then said he unto him, A certain man made a great supper and bade many. My Tuesdays with Edwards posts have been looking at the ways which show “how gospel provision is well represented by a feast.” First Edwards showed how he saw this in the expensiveness of gospel blessings, then in the free offer of it, then as it nourishes the soul as food does the body, and last week because of the excellency of it. This week’s post looks at the fifth reason.

You can read this sermon in its entirety at www.edwards.yale.edu. This selection is from Sermons and Discourses, 1723-1729, ed. Kenneth P. Minkema, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 14 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997) Pages 284-285.

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But we shall show in some particular instances how gospel provision is well represented by a feast….

V. Gospel provision is well compared to a feast by reason of the abundance and variety of it. There is every kind of blessing for our souls provided in the gospel that we need, so that we may want nothing at all, but may have every regular appetite and desire satisfied and we may be made completely [happy]. There is that which suits all dispositions and tempers, provided they are suitable and not sinful.

There is every kind of thing dispensed in Christ that tends to make us excellent and amiable, and every kind of thing that tends to make us happy. There is that which shall fill every faculty of the soul and in a great variety. What a glorious variety is there for the entertainment of the understanding! How many glorious objects set forth, most worthy to be meditated upon and understood! There are all the glorious attributes of God and the beauties of Jesus Christ, and manifold wonders to be seen in the way of salvation, the glories of heaven and the excellency of Christian graces. And there is a glorious variety for the satisfying the will: there are pleasures, riches and honors; there are all things desirable or lovely. There is various entertainment for the affections, for love, for joy, for desire and hope. The blessings are innumerable.

And then, besides this, each kind is in great abundance. There is an inexhaustible fountain of blessings. Every kind of dainty is in inexhaustible plenty. Therefore ’tis called a river of water of life, rivers of pleasure forevermore [Revelation 22:1]. Here the soul manifests itself abundantly without danger of spending the provision.

Therefore Christ says to his people, “Eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved” (Canticles 5:1). There is no such thing as excess in our taking of this spiritual food. There is no such virtue as temperance in spiritual feasting.